Re: generating format-patch options from an e-mail

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 09:31:46PM +0000, Pyeron, Jason J CTR (US) wrote:

> > That would work for the message-ID, but not for the various To: and Cc:
> > addresses.
> > 
> > The hacky script that I sent afterwards produces a string with the
> 
> Nit, it does not make use of the reply-to header if present.

I do something very similar to Simon, except that rather than generating
a reply with my script, I generate the cover letter in my MUA, and then
use that response as a template. So the MUA does the heavy lifting,
understanding reply-to, culling my own address from cc, etc. The
format-patch replies then have the exact same to/cc headers as the
template, and use the template's message-id as the in-reply-to (for
proper threading).

My perl looks like this (feed the template via stdin):

  perl -ne '
    if (defined $opt && /^\s+(.*)/) {
      $val .= " $1";
      next;
    }
    if (defined $opt) {
      print "--$opt=", quotemeta($val), " ";
      $opt = $val = undef;
    }
    if (/^(cc|to):\s*(.*)/i) {
      $opt = lc($1);
      $val = $2;
    }
    elsif (/^message-id:\s*(.*)/i) {
      $opt = "in-reply-to";
      $val = $1;
    }
  '

That, of course, presupposes a cover letter. If I am sending a single
patch, then I just do "format-patch --stdout" right into my MUA's
editor), and let it handle the headers.

-Peff