Re: patch attachments still unwelcome?

[Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com>]

On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 2:13 PM Theodore Y. Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Nov 01, 2019 at 10:04:56AM +0100, Greg KH wrote:
> > > So the documentation in the kernel advising against sending
> > > patch attachments seems hypocritical.  Changing the kernel docs
> > > allow patch attachments could be a good start to making life
> > > easier for contributors without SMTP or IMAP access.
> >
> > It's not hypocritical, as lots of email clients still get this wrong and
> > make responding to attachments almost impossible.  Many do get it right,
> > but trying to document the differences here is quite difficult (I tried
> > once, gave up as it was a mess).
> >
> > > Are many MUAs still incapable of handling them?
> > > mutt shows text patches inline, at least.
> >
> > For most MUAs that send them, yes, but not for all.  I know of at least
> > 2 that send text attachments in formats that mutt will not show it
> > inline, nor allow responding to them properly.  MacOS Mail is one easy
> > example to point to as getting this totally wrong.
> >
> > So, if you know what you are doing, yes, this is fine, but it's still a
> > good idea to say "please do not do this" to make it easier for people
> > just starting out.
>
> Perhaps we should explicitly explain this and then include a white
> list of MUA's that can send text attachments safely/correctly?  (e.g.,
> if you are using the following MUA's, using text attachments are OK;
> if you are using the following MUA's, it will definitely NOT work;
> with all others, proceed with caution.)


One thing that wasn't clear to me when I implemented syzbot is that
some people see attachments inline. syzbot included whole kernel
config and 1MB of logs as attachments, I assumed that other people see
them as, well, attachments. So that may be worth documenting as well.
Though, I did not know that document exists as well, so it would not
help me...