Re: [PATCH v2] send-email: add --smtp-outlook-id-tweak option

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 28, 2025, 20:47 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqh628au94.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <PN3PR01MB9597D897A65B4B59BA6FA93CB8812@PN3PR01MB9597.INDPRD01.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>

Aditya Garg <gargaditya08@live.com> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Add an option to allow users to specifically enable or disable
> retrieving the Message-ID from the Outlook SMTP server. This can be used
> for other hosts mimicking the behaviour of Outlook, or for users who set
> a custom domain to be a CNAME for the Outlook SMTP server.
>
> Helped-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
> Signed-off-by: Aditya Garg <gargaditya08@live.com>
> ---
> v2: Replace tab with spaces in "outlookidtweak" => \$outlook_id_tweak,

Good eyes ;-)

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> +--smtp-outlook-id-tweak=(always|never|auto)::
> +	Outlook servers discard the Message-ID sent via email and assign a
> +	new random Message-ID, thus breaking threads.
> ++
> +--
> +- 'auto' will attempt to retrieve the ID from the server only if the SMTP
> +  server is 'smtp.office365.com' or 'smtp-mail.outlook.com'.
> +- 'always' will attempt to retrieve the ID from the server irrespective of
> +  the SMTP server being used. Use only if Microsoft is your email provider.
> +- 'never' will disable this tweak irrespective of theSMTP server being used.

It is a shame that this is not just a simple boolean. Those who expect 'true' to kick in would be disappointed to find that their 'true' means the same thing as 'auto'.

If I were designing this feature, I would rather make it say:

    --[no-]outlook-message-id-fix::

	Outlook servers [DO THIS].  Giving this option reads the
	message-id assigned by the Outlook server and use it as the
	In-Reply-To message ID for subsequent messages.  Without the
	option, connections to only ... and ... automatically gets
	this tweak.  Pass `--no-outlook-message-id-fix` to disable
	the fix even for these hosts.

and make the implementation behave that way.

Note that this is a command line option that is specific to git-send-email, so I omitted "smtp" from the name and instead replaced 'id' with 'message-id' to make it more explicit what gets munged.

But I do not care too deeply either way. Let me queue the patch as-is for now.

Thanks.