Subject: Re: [RFC-PATCH 1/2] send-email: new option to quote an email and reply to

From: Matthieu Moy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 May 2016 20:31:00 +0200

Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> writes:

> Matthieu Moy <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> This should work, but sounds like too much of overloading of
>> --in-reply-to IMHO: if given a message id, it would only add a reference
>> to this message-id, but if given a file, it would also modify the To:
>> and Cc: list.
>>
>> Not a strong objection, though.
>
> Well, with your "that is the plan indeed", the option would behave
> the same whether given a message ID or a filename, no?

The "fetch message from ID" feature should not be unconditional IMHO. So
it would probably be stg like:

  git send-email --in-reply-to=<id> --fetch

What's a bit counter-intuitive is that --fetch would not only trigger
fetching the complete message, but also populate To/Cc. But thinking
about it, it's not _that_ counter-intuitive, as fetching the message
should be done for a reason, so the user can guess that the message is
going to be used for something.

So, a possible UI would be:

  git send-email --in-reply-to=<id> => just set In-Reply-To: field.

  git send-email --in-reply-to=<file> => set In-Reply-To, To and Cc.

  git send-email --in-reply-to=<file> --cite => in addition, add the
    body of the message quoted with '> '.

  git send-email --in-reply-to=<id> --fetch => fetch and do like <file>
    using the default configuration for fetch.

This leaves room for:

  git send-email --in-reply-to=<id> --fetch=gmane => fetch from gmane
    (details on how to fetch would be in the config file)

This UI wouldn't allow using a file to get only the message-id. But I'm
not sure this is an interesting use-case.

So, I guess you convinced me.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/