Re: [GSoC] A late proposal: a modern send-email

[惠轶群 <huiyiqun@gmail.com>]

2016-03-26 14:18 GMT+08:00 Pranit Bauva <pranit.bauva@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 7:43 AM, 惠轶群 <huiyiqun@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2016-03-26 2:16 GMT+08:00 Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>:
>>> 惠轶群 <huiyiqun@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> # Purpose
>>>> The current implementation of send-email is based on perl and has only
>>>> a tui, it has two problems:
>>>> - user must install a ton of dependencies before submit a single patch.
>>>> - tui and parameter are both not quite friendly to new users.
>>>
>>> Is "a ton of dependencies" true?  "apt-cache show git-email"
>>> suggests otherwise.  Is "a ton of dependencies" truly a problem?
>>> "apt-get install" would resolve the dependencies for you.
>>
>> There are three perl packages needed to send patch through gmail:
>> - perl-mime-tools
>> - perl-net-smtp-ssl
>> - perl-authen-sasl
>>
>> Yes, not too many, but is it better none of them?
>
> Are you sure using a GUI does not have any dependencies?
>
>> What's more, when I try to send mails, I was first disrupted by
>> "no perl-mime-tools" then by "no perl-net-smtp-ssl or perl-authen-sasl".
>> Then I think, why not just a mailto link?
>>
>>>> # Plan
>>>> So I propose to implement following:
>>>> - Allow user to send mail via a [`mailto`
>>>> link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailto). so that users could
>>>> complete the mail in their favorite email clients such as gmail, mutt,
>>>> alpine and even gmail for android through
>>>
>>> IIRC, GMail on Android is incapable of sending a "text/plain", so
>>> that part may not fly well.
>>
>> Really? As much as I known, GMail on Android is capable of sending
>> a "text/plain" while Inbox is not.
>
> How do you plan in integrating GMail on Android so that it can send
> patches which exists on your computer?

No, if you could have termux a try, you will find that it's suitable for simple
development. it has a apt, so you could have clang, neovim, tmux, cmake
and so on.

In fact, I recently use my nexus 7 with termux as a portable
development environment.
A bluetooth keyboard is needed, of course.

>>>> - Build a simple email client (maybe a web components based web app or
>>>> wxwidgets based GUI client, they are both cross-platform) which is
>>>> easy to use for sending patch without disrupting the mailbox format.
>
> I think introducing a GUI may lead to much more dependencies. Many git
> developers already have perl packages in their system but they don't
> have wxwidgets.

wxwidgets seems not a good choice. But if I build the GUI via web app,
I could import required js and css from Internet directly, so the users do
not need the dependencies on their computer.

>>> I suspect it would yield a better result if the plan were to update
>>> a popular email client and make it possible to tell it to read an
>>> existing text file (i.e. mbox) without corrupting its contents.
>>> People do not have to learn a new mail client if done that way.
>>
>> Maybe a plugin? I'm not sure.
>
> You could make a plugin. That would simply things.
>
>> If above `mail-to` is implemented, user could just using any mail
>> client, but a mail client adaptive for patch would be better:
>> - Do not allow user to edit the diff part
>> - always 'plan/text'
>> - visual