[MFT set this time] On Sat, Aug 14, 2004 at 11:11:38AM +0100, Colin Watson wrote: > On Sat, Aug 14, 2004 at 04:14:34PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: > > I'm writing a bit of anciliary documentation about the BTS, and I'm up to > > talking about X-Debbugs-Cc. The official docs at > > http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting state, rather emphatically, that it > > must be in the mail header, not the pseudo-header. Three questions: > > > > 1) Is this still accurate information? > > Yes, it is. > > > 2) Why is it done this way, instead of allowing either the mail or pseudo > > header to carry it? > > > > 3) Could the code be modified to scan the pseudo-header as well for > > X-Debbugs-Cc? > > I think the main question is what to do when both exist. Concatenate the > values, maybe? (It seems unlikely, but people do all kinds of weird > stuff.) > > Also, "X-Debbugs-" is a kind of weird prefix to have on a pseudo-header, > since it's only there because of the way the mail header format works. > I'd expect any pseudo-header equivalent to be simply "Cc:". OK, has anyone considered normalising the user interface, with something like "You can put a Cc: in the pseudo-header or X-Debbugs-Cc: in the mail header, if there's both (Cc|X-Debbugs-Cc) gets precedence and the other one is ignored"? Is there any particular reason why the mail header got the special Cc instead of the pseudo-header? I'm just trying to get a good reason as to why it was done that way In The Beginning and never changed. I can't understand why monkeying the mail header was thought the right way for this one feature, when we already have a pseudo-header carrying all sorts of other useful information. If there's no technological reason why it can't be done, would the debbugs (and Debian BTS) maintainers be willing to accept a patch from me to implement (and document) a Cc (or other acceptably named) field in the pseudo-header to serve as a normalised adjunct or replacement to X-Debbugs-Cc? - Matt
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