8 ms·

“Problems” with git format-patch

134 points by davvid 8y ago

josteink 8y ago
Gmail is wrong? And no surprise there. Don’t get me wrong: having written enough email-stuff myself, I can fully sympathize with Linus. That said: Just like the worldwide web is quickly turning into whatever Google pushes through Chrome and their web assets, internet email now slowly seems to become whatever Gmail does or supports. Which is terrible. 90% of the programming guides for various languages and libraries now are not “This is how you send an internet email using SMTP from $X”, they are “This is how you send a Gmail from $X”. And all that’s because of one single thing only: Market-share. Get off Gmail. Get off Chrome. And help others do that too. Help bring down that market-share, and you may help restore balance to the internet.
- pmlnr 8y ago
  I've been hosting my own mail for more, than a decade. It pays off; eg. I can access it even in China, unlike gmail. Despite the myths, it's not _that_ hard to set it up, but you do need your clean own ipv4 address for everything to go smooth - I mean go around and get it off blacklists before you actually start using it as mail server. Test it here: https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx Once that's done, things like SPF, DKIM, DMARC are time consuming to set up, but not particularly hard or tricky, and there are tonnes of good guides out there.
  - jlelse 8y ago
    The problem is that for some people it's even to hard to switch to another provider than Gmail, how are they supposed to setup their own mail server?
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      If you have an ISP, that ISP is providing you email _right now_. Not being able to find another provider isn't an issue.
  - viraptor 8y ago
    > you do need your clean own ipv4 address Actually you need to clean /24 your address belongs to. Some people use blacklists which assign reputation to the whole /24 and unless you control that, you're going to have a bad day. (Yes, it's a really silly idea to use those lists, but some people do. And you want their users to get your emails.)
  - bradleyjg 8y ago
    I had my own mail service. I switched to gmail when it first came out because the spam filtering was much much better than anything than available to the public. Kind of like why I switched from altavista to google search. What's the spam filtering picture like for DIY these days?
    - amaccuish 8y ago
      I use rspamd. Works really well for me.
    - pmlnr 8y ago
      Greylisting + weighted dnsbl from multiple sources stops the majority of it. The remaining can be caught even with bogofilter.
      - bradleyjg 8y ago
        How's the false positive rate?
- jlelse 8y ago
  It is so sad. Isn't email meant to be decentralized and distributed? Instead people go to Gmail although it's full of ads and Google is abusing their privacy. The death of Google Inbox (which used to have a strong fan group) could have been an opportunity for many users instead of using Gmail switching to another email provider, instead they just install another client and continue using Gmail. I really hope Gmail is going to implement harder restrictions against those clients, so that people finally understand that Gmail is bad and look for other options.
- alluro2 8y ago
  Doing my part. I've been an Inbox user ever since it was released, and liked it due to how much simpler it was to keep the inbox clean, and a much improved layout and usability over regular Gmail (centered, cleaner layout, grouping by day / age etc). But lack of attention to the product for smallest basic things (e.g. number of unread messages in tab title) for years, and eventually announcement of shutdown, with simultaneous missteps with Chrome, really did it for me. Looking at a garbled mess that is Gmail UI on a larger resolution was not an option. Aqua Mail is amazingly customizable for Android, Postbox works nicely on OSX, and Firefox is better than ever and much easier to go back to than I expected. Not looking back for sure. If only I could get rid of my Gmail address as well, but that's significantly harder...
- jokoon 8y ago
  I have thought about using something else than gmail, but it seems hard to find something reliable enough, free, that will still be there in 10 years, which a good enough spam filter, with customizable filters and labels. Changing one's email address is not a trivial task, I would not do it if I would be sure it's worth it. I totally understand the political issues of privacy and monopolies, but fighting those by not using gmail is not going to improve things that much. Everybody knows privacy is an issue, but switching to a privacy-oriented mail provider will also make somebody rich over some paranoia, and it won't necessarily make things more secure.
  - josteink 8y ago
    > it seems hard to find something reliable enough, free I’m sure if you decide that your privacy and the health of the Internet holds value to you (as in, you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is), finding good options will be much easier. Personally I use a paid FastMail-account which I’m super-happy about, but I’ve heard there are other good options out there too. But if you don’t want to pay for a core service you use every day, for everything, you can’t complain about that service degrading, now can you?
  - Thev00d00 8y ago
    You have to pay for it basically. My Fastmail subscription is absolutely worth it.
  - zie 8y ago
    If you buy a domain through gandi.net, they give you 2 email addresses free. They use SOGO, so it's decent.
- estomagordo 8y ago
  I like Gmail. I like Chrome. Why would I sacrifice my productivity for some abstract over-arching notion of "balance"?
  - mikl 8y ago
    Because you might not like where Google takes Gmail or Chrome in the future. Like when we had a decade of zero progress in web technology because Microsoft was holding everyone back with their virtual Internet Explorer monopoly.
    - estomagordo 8y ago
      Why would I not simply stop using them at the point where I no longer like them?
      - jolmg 8y ago
        Because by then the web might not work without Chrome.
        estomagordo 8y ago
        Okay. And this interfers with my routines, how?
        jolmg 8y ago
        When did I say it interfered with your routines?
  - tremon 8y ago
    In other words, "fuck you, got mine" ?
    - estomagordo 8y ago
      Why would my completely reasonable action be interpreted as something rude? There's no "you" featured in my decision.
jobigoud 8y ago
> I have a very strong suspicion that it's easier to fix "git format-patch" than it is to fix whatever odd gmail issue. Third option: Update the RFC so that it's more opinionated and makes the ordering of the headers a mandatory part of the spec.
- chaosprophet 8y ago
  Have the entire world change their implementation rather than the one company which is doing it wrong? This is not how RFCs work. There's a reason RFCs came about, and it was to prevent this exact type of situation. Just because a company has a large market share, doesn't mean RFCs should be changed to suit it.
- nolok 8y ago
  So instead of a non opinionated RFC that most clients and servers mostly follows you now have an opinionated RFC that nobody follows and is useless. I'm not sure what the gain is there.
simias 8y ago
It's tempting to pile on Gmail and its monopoly and use this as an example of them "taking over" email but at the same time this type of ossification for long-used protocols is fairly common in my experience. In practice everybody ends up relying on a safe subset of the spec that everybody is expected to understand correctly. Try implementing a fuzzer for HTTP, SMTP, NTP, USB-C, CD-ROM or, say, TLS that tests every obscure corner case of the spec and see how many implementations fail to conform. Given that I wasn't aware of this issue before reading this email shows that it's probably not much of an issue in practice. I can imagine that whoever implemented this at Google took a shortcut originally, adding a "// XXX maybe we should allow arbitrary order for headers?" comment and it never turned out to be an issue in practice (better yet, it might help them discard bogus emails early in the pipeline). Still, I can empathize with Linus's frustration, it's always annoying when you write technically correct code and it doesn't work because a third party didn't do it right.
- ancarda 8y ago
  Would it help to shuffle the order of the headers in new protocols so software is forced to deal with it actually being optional? Either the order is fixed, or you have to actually experience variety so code in the wild is written to deal with it.
- chrismorgan 8y ago
  > (better yet, it might help them discard bogus emails early in the pipeline). I wouldn’t expect it to be deliberate, but at the same time it wouldn’t surprise me if it was in fact deliberate. SpamAssassin certainly has various rules around precise unusual patterns in headers, penalising things that are perfectly legal, but close to never seen on legitimate email. The main reason I wouldn’t expect it to be deliberate is actually that it’s too helpful: they tell you they’re rejecting it, whereas Gmail’s regular spam filtering is a black box that discloses nothing. I could imagine them black-holing emails like this deliberately as part of a spam-filter, but rejecting them isn’t their style.
- nolok 8y ago
  > this type of ossification for long-used protocols is fairly common in my experience Agreed HTTP (and all it's intermadiary like proxy and cache servers), FTP, IRC, SMTP, ... When you take a peek at what the incumbent actually do and support it's a real wonders that anything works at all. Everyone has their own specific thingy and they own way to understand this or that part. Are they wrong ? Yes, probably, but at the end of the day it's just like this case: the question is not is gmail right or wrong, it's do you want your mails to go through gmail or not.
viraptor 8y ago
I'm more disappointed about the RFC than gmail... Publishing a specific syntax which uses specific ordering and just leaving a note that it's actually incorrect is a really bad way of writing specifications. RFCs should be really clear and explicit in things like that.
- crististm 8y ago
  You are supposed to read the whole RFC (and then some more) when implementing it.
  - viraptor 8y ago
    Sure, that's the theory. The practice is that people won't, and you either have to accept the bad implementations or make sure that everything is as explicit as possible. (And that you don't contradict yourself) If people implemented specs 100% correctly, we wouldn't have bugs. Even without malice or incompetence, people will make mistakes.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
cpach 8y ago
Here’s a copy of the thread with a light color scheme: https://marc.info/?l=git&m=155260711429449&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=git&m=155260711429449&w=2
- chrismorgan 8y ago
  It has a light color scheme, if your browser supports the media query `screen AND (prefers-color-scheme:light)`. Currently that’s Safari 12.1, and Firefox beta channel or later. (I run Nightly, so I was initially puzzled by your comment, since I was seeing it light.)
  - cpach 8y ago
    I had no idea. Cool!
microtherion 8y ago
As an aside, this is a superbly professional e-mail, with clear references to the applicable standards, and the disapproval of the broken service stated firmly, but using clean language. Does anybody really think that Linus' (hopefully) past practice of starting with a foul mouthed rant, and only drilling down into the technical detail three pages in was a more effective way of communicating?
- skocznymroczny 8y ago
  It wasn't "past practice". Linus' rants were a rare event, in case of major "sins" commited by core contributors. They are what made it out in the open, but a lot of Linus' messages in the mailing lists is actually a sane, technical discussion.
  - andreareina 8y ago
    I recall Linus calling some filesystem brain-dead (-damaged?). Could be [1] or [2], but I'm getting a cloudflare error when I try to visit the links. Not as bombastic as some of his rants, but this email is much more professional. [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/70688/focus=71348 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/70688... [2] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/70760 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/7076...
- devit 8y ago
  It was more entertaining, and also working to figure out others' mistakes is more rewarding if you get to berate them in public, so not being allowed to rant reduces the incentive to do the work and thus makes more likely that mistakes will remain unnoticed.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- 6xggd7 8y ago
  I'm sure Linus used clean language 99.999% of the time. He sends dozens of mails daily, so his rate of swearing is not out of the ordinary. The media made it to be something newsworthy, when it was not.

134 points by davvid 8y ago

Gmail is wrong? And no surprise there. Don’t get me wrong: having written enough email-stuff myself, I can fully sympathize with Linus. That said: Just like the worldwide web is quickly turning into whatever Google pushes through Chrome and their web assets, internet email now slowly seems to become whatever Gmail does or supports. Which is terrible. 90% of the programming guides for various languages and libraries now are not “This is how you send an internet email using SMTP from $X”, they are “This is how you send a Gmail from $X”. And all that’s because of one single thing only: Market-share. Get off Gmail. Get off Chrome. And help others do that too. Help bring down that market-share, and you may help restore balance to the internet.

pmlnr 8y ago
I've been hosting my own mail for more, than a decade. It pays off; eg. I can access it even in China, unlike gmail. Despite the myths, it's not _that_ hard to set it up, but you do need your clean own ipv4 address for everything to go smooth - I mean go around and get it off blacklists before you actually start using it as mail server. Test it here: https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx Once that's done, things like SPF, DKIM, DMARC are time consuming to set up, but not particularly hard or tricky, and there are tonnes of good guides out there.
- jlelse 8y ago
  The problem is that for some people it's even to hard to switch to another provider than Gmail, how are they supposed to setup their own mail server?
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    If you have an ISP, that ISP is providing you email _right now_. Not being able to find another provider isn't an issue.
- viraptor 8y ago
  > you do need your clean own ipv4 address Actually you need to clean /24 your address belongs to. Some people use blacklists which assign reputation to the whole /24 and unless you control that, you're going to have a bad day. (Yes, it's a really silly idea to use those lists, but some people do. And you want their users to get your emails.)
- bradleyjg 8y ago
  I had my own mail service. I switched to gmail when it first came out because the spam filtering was much much better than anything than available to the public. Kind of like why I switched from altavista to google search. What's the spam filtering picture like for DIY these days?
  - amaccuish 8y ago
    I use rspamd. Works really well for me.
  - pmlnr 8y ago
    Greylisting + weighted dnsbl from multiple sources stops the majority of it. The remaining can be caught even with bogofilter.
    - bradleyjg 8y ago
      How's the false positive rate?
jlelse 8y ago
It is so sad. Isn't email meant to be decentralized and distributed? Instead people go to Gmail although it's full of ads and Google is abusing their privacy. The death of Google Inbox (which used to have a strong fan group) could have been an opportunity for many users instead of using Gmail switching to another email provider, instead they just install another client and continue using Gmail. I really hope Gmail is going to implement harder restrictions against those clients, so that people finally understand that Gmail is bad and look for other options.
alluro2 8y ago
Doing my part. I've been an Inbox user ever since it was released, and liked it due to how much simpler it was to keep the inbox clean, and a much improved layout and usability over regular Gmail (centered, cleaner layout, grouping by day / age etc). But lack of attention to the product for smallest basic things (e.g. number of unread messages in tab title) for years, and eventually announcement of shutdown, with simultaneous missteps with Chrome, really did it for me. Looking at a garbled mess that is Gmail UI on a larger resolution was not an option. Aqua Mail is amazingly customizable for Android, Postbox works nicely on OSX, and Firefox is better than ever and much easier to go back to than I expected. Not looking back for sure. If only I could get rid of my Gmail address as well, but that's significantly harder...
jokoon 8y ago
I have thought about using something else than gmail, but it seems hard to find something reliable enough, free, that will still be there in 10 years, which a good enough spam filter, with customizable filters and labels. Changing one's email address is not a trivial task, I would not do it if I would be sure it's worth it. I totally understand the political issues of privacy and monopolies, but fighting those by not using gmail is not going to improve things that much. Everybody knows privacy is an issue, but switching to a privacy-oriented mail provider will also make somebody rich over some paranoia, and it won't necessarily make things more secure.
- josteink 8y ago
  > it seems hard to find something reliable enough, free I’m sure if you decide that your privacy and the health of the Internet holds value to you (as in, you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is), finding good options will be much easier. Personally I use a paid FastMail-account which I’m super-happy about, but I’ve heard there are other good options out there too. But if you don’t want to pay for a core service you use every day, for everything, you can’t complain about that service degrading, now can you?
- Thev00d00 8y ago
  You have to pay for it basically. My Fastmail subscription is absolutely worth it.
- zie 8y ago
  If you buy a domain through gandi.net, they give you 2 email addresses free. They use SOGO, so it's decent.
estomagordo 8y ago
I like Gmail. I like Chrome. Why would I sacrifice my productivity for some abstract over-arching notion of "balance"?
- mikl 8y ago
  Because you might not like where Google takes Gmail or Chrome in the future. Like when we had a decade of zero progress in web technology because Microsoft was holding everyone back with their virtual Internet Explorer monopoly.
  - estomagordo 8y ago
    Why would I not simply stop using them at the point where I no longer like them?
    - jolmg 8y ago
      Because by then the web might not work without Chrome.
      - estomagordo 8y ago
        Okay. And this interfers with my routines, how?
        jolmg 8y ago
        When did I say it interfered with your routines?
- tremon 8y ago
  In other words, "fuck you, got mine" ?
  - estomagordo 8y ago
    Why would my completely reasonable action be interpreted as something rude? There's no "you" featured in my decision.

jobigoud 8y ago

> I have a very strong suspicion that it's easier to fix "git format-patch" than it is to fix whatever odd gmail issue. Third option: Update the RFC so that it's more opinionated and makes the ordering of the headers a mandatory part of the spec.

chaosprophet 8y ago
Have the entire world change their implementation rather than the one company which is doing it wrong? This is not how RFCs work. There's a reason RFCs came about, and it was to prevent this exact type of situation. Just because a company has a large market share, doesn't mean RFCs should be changed to suit it.
nolok 8y ago
So instead of a non opinionated RFC that most clients and servers mostly follows you now have an opinionated RFC that nobody follows and is useless. I'm not sure what the gain is there.

simias 8y ago

It's tempting to pile on Gmail and its monopoly and use this as an example of them "taking over" email but at the same time this type of ossification for long-used protocols is fairly common in my experience. In practice everybody ends up relying on a safe subset of the spec that everybody is expected to understand correctly. Try implementing a fuzzer for HTTP, SMTP, NTP, USB-C, CD-ROM or, say, TLS that tests every obscure corner case of the spec and see how many implementations fail to conform. Given that I wasn't aware of this issue before reading this email shows that it's probably not much of an issue in practice. I can imagine that whoever implemented this at Google took a shortcut originally, adding a "// XXX maybe we should allow arbitrary order for headers?" comment and it never turned out to be an issue in practice (better yet, it might help them discard bogus emails early in the pipeline). Still, I can empathize with Linus's frustration, it's always annoying when you write technically correct code and it doesn't work because a third party didn't do it right.

ancarda 8y ago
Would it help to shuffle the order of the headers in new protocols so software is forced to deal with it actually being optional? Either the order is fixed, or you have to actually experience variety so code in the wild is written to deal with it.
chrismorgan 8y ago
> (better yet, it might help them discard bogus emails early in the pipeline). I wouldn’t expect it to be deliberate, but at the same time it wouldn’t surprise me if it was in fact deliberate. SpamAssassin certainly has various rules around precise unusual patterns in headers, penalising things that are perfectly legal, but close to never seen on legitimate email. The main reason I wouldn’t expect it to be deliberate is actually that it’s too helpful: they tell you they’re rejecting it, whereas Gmail’s regular spam filtering is a black box that discloses nothing. I could imagine them black-holing emails like this deliberately as part of a spam-filter, but rejecting them isn’t their style.
nolok 8y ago
> this type of ossification for long-used protocols is fairly common in my experience Agreed HTTP (and all it's intermadiary like proxy and cache servers), FTP, IRC, SMTP, ... When you take a peek at what the incumbent actually do and support it's a real wonders that anything works at all. Everyone has their own specific thingy and they own way to understand this or that part. Are they wrong ? Yes, probably, but at the end of the day it's just like this case: the question is not is gmail right or wrong, it's do you want your mails to go through gmail or not.

viraptor 8y ago

I'm more disappointed about the RFC than gmail... Publishing a specific syntax which uses specific ordering and just leaving a note that it's actually incorrect is a really bad way of writing specifications. RFCs should be really clear and explicit in things like that.

crististm 8y ago
You are supposed to read the whole RFC (and then some more) when implementing it.
- viraptor 8y ago
  Sure, that's the theory. The practice is that people won't, and you either have to accept the bad implementations or make sure that everything is as explicit as possible. (And that you don't contradict yourself) If people implemented specs 100% correctly, we wouldn't have bugs. Even without malice or incompetence, people will make mistakes.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

cpach 8y ago

Here’s a copy of the thread with a light color scheme: https://marc.info/?l=git&m=155260711429449&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=git&m=155260711429449&w=2

chrismorgan 8y ago
It has a light color scheme, if your browser supports the media query `screen AND (prefers-color-scheme:light)`. Currently that’s Safari 12.1, and Firefox beta channel or later. (I run Nightly, so I was initially puzzled by your comment, since I was seeing it light.)
- cpach 8y ago
  I had no idea. Cool!

microtherion 8y ago

As an aside, this is a superbly professional e-mail, with clear references to the applicable standards, and the disapproval of the broken service stated firmly, but using clean language. Does anybody really think that Linus' (hopefully) past practice of starting with a foul mouthed rant, and only drilling down into the technical detail three pages in was a more effective way of communicating?

skocznymroczny 8y ago
It wasn't "past practice". Linus' rants were a rare event, in case of major "sins" commited by core contributors. They are what made it out in the open, but a lot of Linus' messages in the mailing lists is actually a sane, technical discussion.
- andreareina 8y ago
  I recall Linus calling some filesystem brain-dead (-damaged?). Could be [1] or [2], but I'm getting a cloudflare error when I try to visit the links. Not as bombastic as some of his rants, but this email is much more professional. [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/70688/focus=71348 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/70688... [2] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/70760 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/7076...
devit 8y ago
It was more entertaining, and also working to figure out others' mistakes is more rewarding if you get to berate them in public, so not being allowed to rant reduces the incentive to do the work and thus makes more likely that mistakes will remain unnoticed.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
6xggd7 8y ago
I'm sure Linus used clean language 99.999% of the time. He sends dozens of mails daily, so his rate of swearing is not out of the ordinary. The media made it to be something newsworthy, when it was not.