[RFC] parsemail.py: Don't search for patches in replies

[Markus Mayer]

On 7 February 2014 15:13, Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab at infradead.org> wrote:
> Em Fri, 7 Feb 2014 14:52:52 -0800
> Markus Mayer <markus.mayer at linaro.org> escreveu:
>
>> On 7 February 2014 14:37, Wolfram Sang <wsa at the-dreams.de> wrote:
>> > On Fri, Feb 07, 2014 at 11:06:39PM +0100, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
>> >> Am 06.02.2014 23:49 schrieb Markus Mayer:
>> >> > Make sure we don't attempt to search for a patch in a reply e-mail.
>> >> > There are MUAs out there who leave the quoted e-mail intact without
>> >> > prepending quote characters such as ">" at the beginning of each line.
>> >> >
>> >> > When that happens, parse_patch() thinks the quoted patch is new. The
>> >> > result are multiple database entries containing the same patch (one for
>> >> > each such reply) when one would really expect a consolidated thread
>> >> > containing the entire discussion and only one copy of the patch.
>> >> >
>> >> > Signed-off-by: Markus Mayer <markus.mayer at linaro.org>
>> >>
>> >> AFAICS this will cause loss of patches which are sent as replies.
>> >
>> > +1. This approach will cause more pain than gain. Move those users away
>> > from Outlook, would be my recommendation.
>
> +1. The replied patches are generally better versions than the
> original one.
>
>> Have you ever worked for a 10,000+ employee organization?
>>
>> And no, I don't particularly like this solution, either. But I
>> couldn't come up with a better one.
>
> This has nothing to do with the number of employees, but if they're
> using or not the right tools.

It's just that I can't *make* people use a sane mailer. I can suggest
it and remind them, etc, but if they won't do it or forget there's
nothing I can do. Trust me that I tell anybody who'll listen not to
use Outlook for Open Source mailing lists. The more people there are
in an organization, however, the higher the likelihood of Outlook
being involved sooner or later. Plus there is the "corporate standard"
which programs to use.

> Still, I even prefer to receive whitespace mangled patches,
> as I can easily fix trivial whitespace mangling, or otherwise
> reply to the author to fix it for me. This is a way better than
> losing a good patch.

Agreed that losing a patch is not good.

I my instance I don't need to worry about genuine patches being sent
in replies, only comments. I won't lose a patch based on the proposed
change, but I end up with dozens of duplicate patches without it. (I
am trying to import a mailing list archive.) So, in my case it makes
sense, but I understand in others it may not.

Maybe this change could become optional so it can be switched on for
situations where it is helpful, but the default behaviour doesn't
change? For parsemail.py it could be a command line option or a config
file setting. I don't think parsemail.py is currently looking at the
config file, however.

Regards,
-Markus

-- 
Markus Mayer
Broadcom Landing Team