Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 6/6] send-email: add option --cite to quote the message body

From: Matthieu Moy <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2016 13:49:45 +0200

Samuel GROOT <[email-masked]> writes:

> If used with `in-reply-to=<email_file>`, cite the message body of the given
> email file. Otherwise, do nothing.

It should at least warn when --in-reply-to=<email_file> is not given
(either no --in-reply-to or --in-reply-to=<id>). I don't see any
use-case where a user would want --cite on the command-line and not want
--in-reply-to=<email_file>. OTOH, it seems a plausible user-error, and
the user would appreciate a message saying what's going on.

> @@ -56,6 +57,8 @@ git send-email --dump-aliases
>      --subject               <str>  * Email "Subject:"
>      --in-reply-to           <str>  * Email "In-Reply-To:"
>      --in-reply-to          <file>  * Populate header fields appropriately.
> +    --cite                         * Quote the message body in the cover if
> +                                     --compose is set, else in the first patch.
>      --[no-]xmailer                 * Add "X-Mailer:" header (default).
>      --[no-]annotate                * Review each patch that will be sent in an editor.
>      --compose                      * Open an editor for introduction.

Just wondering: would it make sense to activate --cite by default when
--in-reply-to=file is used, and to allow --no-cite to disable this?

This is something we can easily do now without breaking backward
compatibility (--in-reply-to=file doesn't exist yet), but would be more
painful to do later.

> @@ -640,6 +644,7 @@ if (@files) {
>  	usage();
>  }
>  
> +my $message_cited;

Nit: I read "$message_cited" as "Boolean saying whether the message was
cited". $cited_message would be clearer to me (but this is to be taken
with a grain of salt as I'm not a native speaker), since the variable
holds the content of the cited message.

> +sub do_insert_cited_message {
> +	my $tmp_file = shift;
> +	my $original_file = shift;
> +
> +	open my $c, "<", $original_file
> +	or die "Failed to open $original_file: " . $!;
> +
> +	open my $c2, ">", $tmp_file
> +		or die "Failed to open $tmp_file: " . $!;
> +
> +	# Insertion after the triple-dash
> +	while (<$c>) {
> +		print $c2 $_;
> +		last if (/^---$/);
> +	}
> +	print $c2 $message_cited;

I would add a newline here to get a blank line between the message cited
and the diffstat.

I think non-ascii characters would deserve particular attention here
too. For example, if the patch contain only ascii and the cited part
contains UTF-8, does the generated patch have a proper Content-type:
header?

I can imagine worse, like a patch containing latin1 character and a
cited message with another 8-bit encoding.

> +test_expect_success $PREREQ 'correct cited message with --in-reply-to and --compose' '
> +	grep "> On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 15:53:58 +0200, [email-masked] wrote:" msgtxt3 &&

I would prefer to have the full address including the real name here (A
<[email-masked]>) in this example. Actually, after a quick look at
the code, I don't understand where the name has gone (what's shown here
is extracted from the From: header).

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