# Proposal: Remembering message IDs sent with git send-email 6 messages from 2019-05-08 to 2019-05-10. Participants: Drew DeVault, Emily Shaffer, Eric Wong. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/51059 ## Drew DeVault, 2019-05-08 23:10 Subject: Proposal: Remembering message IDs sent with git send-email Message-ID: <20190508231013.GA25216@homura.localdomain> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20190508231013.GA25216%40homura.localdomain ``` I want to gather some thoughts about this. Say you've written a patch series and are getting ready to send a -v2. If you set --in-reply-to=ask, it'll show you a list of emails you've recently sent, and their subject lines, and ask you to pick one to use the message ID from. It'll set the In-Reply-To header to your selection. I'd also like to add a custom header, X-Patch-Supersedes: , with a similar behavior & purpose. Thoughts? ``` ## Emily Shaffer, 2019-05-09 00:19 Subject: Re: Proposal: Remembering message IDs sent with git send-email Message-ID: <20190509001959.GB14000@google.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20190509001959.GB14000%40google.com In-Reply-To: <20190508231013.GA25216@homura.localdomain> ``` On Wed, May 08, 2019 at 07:10:13PM -0400, Drew DeVault wrote: > I want to gather some thoughts about this. Say you've written a patch > series and are getting ready to send a -v2. If you set > --in-reply-to=ask, it'll show you a list of emails you've recently sent, > and their subject lines, and ask you to pick one to use the message ID > from. It'll set the In-Reply-To header to your selection. It sounds to me like you mean to call this during `git format-patch` - that is, `git format-patch -v2 --cover-letter --in-reply-to=ask master..branch -o branch/`. That should set the In-Reply-To: header on your cover letter. There's also the possibility that you mean `git send-email --in-reply-to=ask branch/v2*` - in which case I imagine the In-Reply-To: is added as the message is sent, but not added to the cover letter text file. > > I'd also like to add a custom header, X-Patch-Supersedes: , > with a similar behavior & purpose. Is the hope to store the message ID you choose from --in-reply-to=ask into the X-Patch-Supersedes: header? I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to solve; if you use `git format-patch --in-reply-to` it sounds like the X-Patch-Supersedes: and In-Reply-To: would be redundant. Is it possible you mean you want (sorry for pseudocode scribblings) [PATCH v2 1/1]->X-Patch-Supersedes = [PATCH 1/1]->Message-Id ? I think that wouldn't look good in a threaded mail client? > > Thoughts? Or maybe I totally misunderstood :) What I think might be useful (and what I was hoping you were going to talk about when I saw the subject line) would be if the Message-Id is conveniently stored during `git send-email` on v1 and somehow saved in a useful place in order to apply to the In-Reply-To field on v2 automatically upon `git format-patch -v2`. I'll admit I didn't know about --in-reply-to=ask and that helps with the pain point I've experienced sending out v2 before. - Emily ``` ## Drew DeVault, 2019-05-09 16:50 Subject: Re: Proposal: Remembering message IDs sent with git send-email Message-ID: <20190509165025.GA18342@homura.localdomain> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20190509165025.GA18342%40homura.localdomain In-Reply-To: <20190509001959.GB14000@google.com> ``` On 2019-05-08 5:19 PM, Emily Shaffer wrote: > What I think might be useful (and what I was hoping you were going to > talk about when I saw the subject line) would be if the Message-Id is > conveniently stored during `git send-email` on v1 and somehow saved in a > useful place in order to apply to the In-Reply-To field on v2 > automatically upon `git format-patch -v2`. I'll admit I didn't know > about --in-reply-to=ask and that helps with the pain point I've > experienced sending out v2 before. --in-reply-to=ask doesn't exist, that's what I'm looking to add. This convenient storage mechanism is exactly what I'm talking about. Sorry for the confusion. ``` ## Emily Shaffer, 2019-05-09 18:51 Subject: Re: Proposal: Remembering message IDs sent with git send-email Message-ID: <20190509185136.GC14000@google.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20190509185136.GC14000%40google.com In-Reply-To: <20190509165025.GA18342@homura.localdomain> ``` On Thu, May 09, 2019 at 12:50:25PM -0400, Drew DeVault wrote: > On 2019-05-08 5:19 PM, Emily Shaffer wrote: > > What I think might be useful (and what I was hoping you were going to > > talk about when I saw the subject line) would be if the Message-Id is > > conveniently stored during `git send-email` on v1 and somehow saved in a > > useful place in order to apply to the In-Reply-To field on v2 > > automatically upon `git format-patch -v2`. I'll admit I didn't know > > about --in-reply-to=ask and that helps with the pain point I've > > experienced sending out v2 before. > > --in-reply-to=ask doesn't exist, that's what I'm looking to add. This > convenient storage mechanism is exactly what I'm talking about. Sorry > for the confusion. Looking at the documentation, I suppose I hadn't realized before that --thread will generate a Message-Id for your cover letter. It does seem like we could teach --thread to check for the previous patch's cover letter in the directory provided by -o. Of course, this wouldn't work if the author was generating v2 and didn't have the v1 files available (i.e. different workstation or different author picking up the set). I'm still not sure I see the value of the extra header proposed here. I'd appreciate an explanation of how you think it would be used, Drew. I don't know much about emailed workflows outside of Git; is this something likely to be useful to other communities? - Emily ``` ## Eric Wong, 2019-05-09 20:14 Subject: Re: Proposal: Remembering message IDs sent with git send-email Message-ID: <20190509201401.mtinxj7wqjw6bvlg@dcvr> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20190509201401.mtinxj7wqjw6bvlg%40dcvr In-Reply-To: <20190509165025.GA18342@homura.localdomain> ``` Drew DeVault wrote: > --in-reply-to=ask doesn't exist, that's what I'm looking to add. This > convenient storage mechanism is exactly what I'm talking about. Sorry > for the confusion. Using Net::NNTP to query NNTP servers using ->xover([recent-ish range]) to scan for Message-IDs and Subjects matching the current ident could be an option, too. It could cache the xover result for --dry-run and format-patch cases; and Net::NNTP is a standard Perl module. Going online to do this query also benefits people who work across different machines/environments, as it's one less thing to sync. Fwiw, this list has: nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git nntp://news.public-inbox.org/inbox.comp.version-control.git And there's a bunch of kernel lists at nntp://nntp.lore.kernel.org/ ``` ## Drew DeVault, 2019-05-10 02:25 Subject: Re: Proposal: Remembering message IDs sent with git send-email Message-ID: <20190510022554.GD1281@homura.localdomain> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20190510022554.GD1281%40homura.localdomain In-Reply-To: <20190509185136.GC14000@google.com> ``` On 2019-05-09 11:51 AM, Emily Shaffer wrote: > I'm still not sure I see the value of the extra header proposed here. > I'd appreciate an explanation of how you think it would be used, Drew. I'm not just thinking about your run of the mill mail reader, but also mail readers which are aware of git and could use it to provide git-specific features for browsing patchsets. Distinguishing it from the mecahnism used for normal conversation allows us to have fewer heuristics in such software. ```