From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Linus Torvalds Subject: "mailinfo: Remove only one set of square brackets" considered harmful Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:30:58 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII To: Andreas Ericsson , Junio C Hamano , Git Mailing List X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Wed Jul 15 17:32:18 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1MR6Su-0003cc-Lu for gcvg-git-2@gmane.org; Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:32:17 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755422AbZGOPcI (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:32:08 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755391AbZGOPcI (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:32:08 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:49692 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755330AbZGOPcG (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:32:06 -0400 Received: from imap1.linux-foundation.org (imap1.linux-foundation.org [140.211.169.55]) by smtp1.linux-foundation.org (8.14.2/8.13.5/Debian-3ubuntu1.1) with ESMTP id n6FFUxGJ017309 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:31:00 -0700 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by imap1.linux-foundation.org (8.13.5.20060308/8.13.5/Debian-3ubuntu1.1) with ESMTP id n6FFUwF2007545; Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:30:59 -0700 X-X-Sender: torvalds@localhost.localdomain User-Agent: Alpine 2.01 (LFD 1184 2008-12-16) X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-3.467 required=5 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.4-osdl_revision__1.47__ X-MIMEDefang-Filter: lf$Revision: 1.188 $ X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.63 on 140.211.169.13 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: So I see why Andreas did it, and I don't disagree violently, BUT... The fact is, we have mailing lists etc that add their own headers to the subject, and they know they can add things in brackets. The most obvious example is the Linux kernel security list, which adds a prefix of "[Security] " to the subject line in order to stand out (I'm on other lists that do this too, but those generally don'thave patches). So I have emails witgh subjects like Subject: [Security] [patch] random: make get_random_int() more random but I also have people who do the same thing themselves, eg: Subject: [PATCH -rc] [BUGFIX] x86: fix kernel_trap_sp() Subject: [BUGFIX][PATCH] fix bad page removal from LRU (Was Re: [RFC][PATCH] .. so people did kind of depend on the "remove square brackets" behavior. Sure, I end up editing the subject lines (and in that last example I would have had to anyway), but I'm not so sure this was a good change. The commit log says: However, since format-patch only adds one set of square brackets, this behaviour is quite easily undesrstood and defended while the previous behaviour is not. but sadly, Andreas totally missed the fact that we're not talking about just format-patch, and that the whole bracket removal is about emails in general. So I'd suggest at least a setting to reinstate the previous behavior. Linus