Re: [PATCH] send-mail: Add option to sleep between sending each email.

From: mfwitten@gmail.com <mfwitten@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 9, 2011, 02:02 UTC
Message-ID: <eba7fd939a4945a9bfe18afc125c3962-mfwitten@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vbouvx8j5.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Thu, 08 Sep 2011 10:12:46 -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:
>
>> There have been discussion (and IIRC a patch) proposing this already in
>> the past. One advantage of sleeping a bit between each email is that it
>> increase the chances for the receiver to receive the emails in the right
>> order.
>
> Huh? Even in the presense of MTAs in the middle that are free to reorder
> messages?
>
> IIRC, "git send-email" does its best to force ordering by assigning
> monotonically increasing timestamps on the Date: field, so that the
> recipients can sort the messages based on it, in addition to the
> In-Reply-To field to help threading. I personally do not think there is
> anything more than that that should done in the program.

The previous, rather lengthy discussion involved my patch and took place over 2 years ago. The thread starts here:

  Message-ID: <1239139522-24118-1-git-send-email-mfwitten@gmail.com?
  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/115988

continues here (because of my email header mistake):

  Message-ID: <49dcb464.06d7720a.66ca.ffffbd30@mx.google.com>
  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/116083

and ultimately, the final patch review was proferred here:

  Message-Id: <1239647037-15381-11-git-send-email-mfwitten@gmail.com>
  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/116471

>From a quick glance, my patch would appear to have become more advanced,

as per your own request, Junio:

  Message-ID: <7vskkh1va5.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/116083

Here's the documentation I wrote for it:

  diff --git a/Documentation/git-send-email.txt b/Documentation/git-send-email.txt
  index 5f7d640..236e578 100644
  --- a/Documentation/git-send-email.txt
  +++ b/Documentation/git-send-email.txt
  @@ -178,6 +178,36 @@ Automating
   	cc list. Default is the value of 'sendemail.signedoffbycc' configuration
   	value; if that is unspecified, default to --signed-off-by-cc.
   
  +--sleep=<seconds>[,<burst>]::
  +	This option specfies that send-email should sleep for <seconds>
  +	after sending <burst> messages as quickly as possible; <seconds>
  +	should be an integer >= 0 and <burst> should be an integer >= 1.
  +	This mode of operation attacks 2 problems: email throttling and
  +	arrival disorder. Default is the value of the 'sendemail.sleep'
  +	configuration variable, or '0' if that does not exist.
  ++
  +By default, send-email tries to send one patch per email as quickly as
  +possible. Unfortunately, some email services restrict a user by refusing
  +to send more than some maximum number of email messages, M, in a given
  +period of seconds, S. This can be troublesome if the patch series has
  +more than M patches, because the server will ultimately refuse to send
  +some of them. In this case, simply pass '--sleep=S,M' or '--sleep S,M'
  +or set sendemail.sleep to 'S,M'.
  ++
  +Moreover, the emails often arrive at the final destination out of order;
  +though send-email manipulates the date fields and usually chains subsequent
  +emails via the In-Reply-To headers, some mail viewers nevertheless insist
  +on presenting them by order of arrival. This may be mitigated by using
  +something like '--sleep 60' (the equivalent of '--sleep 60,1'), so that
  +there is a 60 second delay between sending any two messages.
  ++
  +*Note*: Because of varying routes and batching schemes, there is no delay
  +that can guarantee the correct arrival order. Obviously, one solution is to
  +choose an obscenely large number, so be prepared to run send-email in the
  +background. Of course, spreading emails across time makes it more likely
  +that unrelated email messages arrive between patches. Therefore, send-email
  +warns you if both --sleep and --no-chain-reply-to are used.
  +
   --suppress-cc=<category>::
   	Specify an additional category of recipients to suppress the
   	auto-cc of:

Sincerely, Michael Witten