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 18:56:08 +0200

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

> I wonder if we can safely repurpose existing --in-reply-to option?

In theory, obviously no as there can be a file with this name _and_ it
can be a valid message-id. In practice, it is clearly unlikely. The only
use-case I can think of where both would be valid is if the user happens
to have saved the message using the message-id as filename. But then,
the ambiguity would not harm, as the message-id contained in the file
would be the same as the filename.

> That is, if the value of --in-reply-to can be reliably determined as
> a filename that has the message (as opposed to a message-id), we
> read the "Message-Id:" from that file to figuire out what message-id
> to use, and figure out To/Cc: to use for the purpose of your (1) at
> the same time.

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.

> In the future, you might even teach send-email, perhaps via a user
> configurable hook, a way to get to the message header and text given a
> message-id, and when it happens, the same logic can be used when
> --in-reply-to is given a message-id (i.e. you go from the id to the
> message and find the addresses you would To/Cc: your message).

That is the plan indeed. Fetching from gmane for example should be
rather easy in perl, and would be really convenient!

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