Subject: Ambiguous -from of git-send-email

From: Sheng Yang <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:57:10 +0800

Hi, all

A trivial problem here, but I think it can be handled more clearly.

Recently when I begin to use git-send-email with my private email
account, I found it didn't work as I expected. The problem is "From" of
the patch. I have to specify my company email in the "From" which meant
the author, but when I go with default value of git-send-email, I found
it omit the additional "From" of patch in the mailbody.

For example, I specified "[email-masked]" in patch's "From: " when used
git-format-patch to generate it. And I use "[email-masked]" to send the
mail.  But if I go with default setting of git-send-email, it said the
mail would be sent as "from [email-masked]"(of course it can't). At
last, the sent mail only got "From [email-masked]" in mail header, and
"From [email-masked]" was omitted.

I've checked the git-send-email code, and found what's the real meaning
of "-from" specify in git-send-email is the email account(sender) rather
than the author. And if the sender is the same as the author, the first
line of patch "From: xxx" was omitted. But at least on my machine, the
from specified in the mail would be overwritten by MTA/ISP(well, I am
not sure which of them did this), so what's the content of "-from" is
not important, but if "-from" is the same as "From" in the patch, the
"From" line in the patch is omitted, otherwise the line is kept.

Yeah, it's reasonable. But I think it's not that clear. "-from" of
git-send-email indicated the sender and "From" indicated the author is
very ambiguous.  Maybe use "-sender" here in parameter is more
reasonable? And do we need some notes in manual?

And can we add a something like "sendemail.sender" to specify the
sender? I think it's not that unusual to make author's email address is
different from sender, at least I think it's more common than
"sendmail.bcc".

If you agree, I'd like to offer a patch for "sendemail.sender"(maybe
also give some note in manual for "-from").

Thanks!

--
regards
Yang, Sheng