Re: Problem with "From:" line on "git format-patch" generated patches

["André Goddard Rosa" <andre.goddard@gmail.com>]

On 11/3/09, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi André,
>
> André Goddard Rosa wrote:
>
>>> I'm not using any specific tool for inputting the git-format-patch,
>>> but instead I'm sending the files generated by it through gmail as an
>>> inlined patch in the email body.
>>>
>>> I like the convenience of format-patch for generating the patch files,
>>> but in this case, formatting the header as rfc2047 is not necessary
>>> and makes a funny/garbled output in my patch submission.
>
> The header fields git format-patch outputs are just intended as a
> starting point for the header of your mailing.  It is more convenient
> to receive an e-mail with
>
> 	Delivered-to: maintainer@example.com
> 	Received: [...]
> 	Message-ID: <patch.sender.0001@example.com>
> 	Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:33:54 -0600
> 	From: Patch Sender <patch.sender@example.com>
> 	Subject: [PATCH] Fix one bug, add another
> 	Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> 	Blah blah blah
>
> than one in which the content includes some useless metadata that was
> already in the header.  So you should just strip the header out from
> the body before sending.
>
> There are three common exceptions: 1) you might want to send a patch
> written by someone else, 2) you might want to mark a patch as written
> before it was sent, and 3) some people like to receive patches as
> attachments rather than inlined in messages.  For the first two cases,
> the solution is to include the header fields to change in the body:
>
> 	From: Patch Writer <patch.writer@example.com>
> 	Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1970 01:23:45 +0100
>
> 	Blah blah blah
> 	---
> 	Hi,
>
> 	Patch Writer wrote this patch a while ago that might be
> 	relevant.  It needed a straightforward one-line change to
> 	apply and is otherwise unchanged.
>
> 	What do you think?
> [...]
>
> For the last case, I think it is most common to send unchanged 'git
> format-patch' output.  But only the From, Date, and Subject fields
> are actually needed.
>
> I am not sure how well 'git am' copes with non-ascii characters in
> the pseudo-header lines: I would have guessed it could handle them
> both rfc2047-encoded and not, but I have not tried.
>
>> I really would like continuing having the convenience of using a web
>> access to my gmail for sending the patches, so I just need a way to
>> format the patches which makes it easy submitting them later. I'd like
>> to avoid using any other email client for that, if possible.
>
> Here, there is another danger: the Gmail web interface does not
> consider your whitespace precious, so it is very prone to mangling
> patches (especially with long lines).
>
> Documentation/SubmittingPatches [1] has some advice:
>
> | Gmail
> | -----
> |
> | GMail does not appear to have any way to turn off line wrapping in the web
> | interface, so this will mangle any emails that you send.  You can however
> | use any IMAP email client to connect to the google imap server, and
> forward
> | the emails through that.  Just make sure to disable line wrapping in that
> | email client.  Alternatively, use "git send-email" instead.
> |
> | Submitting properly formatted patches via Gmail is simple now that
> | IMAP support is available. First, edit your ~/.gitconfig to specify your
> | account settings:
> |
> | [imap]
> | 	folder = "[Gmail]/Drafts"
> | 	host = imaps://imap.gmail.com
> | 	user = user@gmail.com
> | 	pass = p4ssw0rd
> | 	port = 993
> | 	sslverify = false
> |
> | You might need to instead use: folder = "[Google Mail]/Drafts" if you get
> an error
> | that the "Folder doesn't exist".
> |
> | Next, ensure that your Gmail settings are correct. In "Settings" the
> | "Use Unicode (UTF-8) encoding for outgoing messages" should be checked.
> |
> | Once your commits are ready to send to the mailing list, run the following
> | command to send the patch emails to your Gmail Drafts folder.
> |
> | 	$ git format-patch -M --stdout origin/master | git imap-send
> |
> | Go to your Gmail account, open the Drafts folder, find the patch email,
> fill
> | in the To: and CC: fields and send away!
>
> Good luck.
>
> Hope that helps,

Hello, Jonatan!

     Thanks for your insights, surely I understand what is reasoning behind it.
     I expect this thread will be useful to others in the future. Here
goes another relevant reference about sending patches using web GUI of
gmail :
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/email-clients.txt;h=a618efab7b156658be70b29c1a6a9b9c4093e0f5;hb=HEAD

Thanks a lot,
André