Re: [PATCH] send-email: new option to walkaround email server limits

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 4, 2017, 01:24 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqk25xct1w.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CACBZZX6fursxEaBGr9raz+x8qBm0WZrmHCkMbtpajRzOM3B6qA@mail.gmail.com>

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> It makes sense to have a configurable delay for git-send-email
> unrelated to this option, I'd use a facility like that.
>
> A lot of mail clients just sort based on date/msgid or whatever not
> date/subject, so the rapid-fire output of send-email often arrives out
> of order because it's all sent at the same second. I'd use some option
> where I could send a series as "all" and have it sleep(N) in between
> sending mails.

Hmph. When sending many messages, send-email first grabs the current time, counts backwards N seconds for N message series, and uses that timestamp that is N seconds in the past for the first message, incrementing the timestamp by 1 second per each subsequent ones.

I found that this trick is sufficient to cause receiving MUAs sort messages based on date, as the Date: field will have the timestamps that increases by 1 second in between messages in a batch.

There might be MUAs that do not use the value of the Date: field when told to sort by date (perhaps they use the timestamp of the message file they received at the final hop to them?), but it is hopeless to help such MUAs unless the mail path guarantees the order at the originator, which is not how "store and forward" e-mails work.

So...