Re: [PATCH v6] mailinfo: allow e-mail files as input

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 17, 2009, 19:54 UTC
Message-ID: <7vtz1b3x26.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20090717190601.6117@nanako3.lavabit.com>

Nanako Shiraishi <nanako3@lavabit.com> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

>>  OPTIONS
>>  -------
>> -<mbox>|<Maildir>...::
>> -	The list of mailbox files to read patches from. If you do not
>> +<mbox>|<Maildir>...|<email>...::
>> +	The list of mailbox files or email to read patches from. If you do not
>>  	supply this argument, the command reads from the standard input.
>>  	If you supply directories, they will be treated as Maildirs.
>>  
>
> I wasn't following the discussion closely, and at first I didn't understand this change to the documentation, because it doesn't say how <mbox> and <email> are different. I'm afraid many readers of the documentation don't understand it either.

I could tell _you_ that I prefer to see people go back to the list archive instead of saying "I wasn't following", but I cannot say that to readers of the documentation after this patch is applied. After re-reading the above, you are right---it is unclear.

> Why does this description have ... in it? If I'm reading it correctly, the code in check_patch_format function checks only the first file.

Good eyes.

This actually is an issue with the Guiseppe's multi-format support patch in that we assume that the command line input are of uniform type, check only $1 and assume $2 and subsequent are suitable to be fed to the same splitter.

I do not think it is necessary to allow mixed input. We certainly could, but why bother? It is not a sensible nor common thing to do.

Also the documentation said we take only one mbox or multiple Maildirs, but in reality we can take multiple mboxes just fine, so <mbox> should have had "..." at the end (we could lose the ellipses from all of them for brevity). Oh, and it should list the other formats Giuseppe added.

    <mbox>|<maildir>|<email>::

	    One or more of the same type of mail source to read e-mails
            from.  A directory is taken as a mailbox in the maildir
            format.  A file is taken as UNIX mbox, StGit patch series
            file, or a single piece of e-mail in RFC2822 format.