Question about attachments on the mailing list

Question about attachments on the mailing list

[Erick Ochoa]

Hi,

I recently sent an e-mail to the gcc@gcc.gnu.org mailing list. The 
e-mail I sent had an attachment. The e-mail has not showed up on the 
mailing list archive [0].

* Are attachments allowed? The policies [1] say that attachments for 
large messages are allowed. Are they not allowed for smaller messages?

* I subscribed to the mailing list after sending my e-mail with the 
attachment. Are attachments only allowed for subscribers? The spam 
blocking section [1] says subscribers will not be subject to any kind of 
spam blocking.

* If attachments are not allowed, can someone let me know what is the 
best practice for including test cases that are not yet part of the 
testing suite? I have a small program written in a folder (outside of 
gcc) that I use to test a new transformation I am working on. Should I 
just include these test cases as part of the patch?

* I previously had some difficulties with how my e-mail client was 
rendering messages I sent to the mailing list [2][3]. Does anyone have 
any recommendations on e-mail clients / techniques to ensure that the 
way I type messages on my client is the way the messages will be 
displayed on the mailing list? (For example, I am currently using 
Thunderbird writing text only messages and Thunderbird wraps lines at 
~70 characters. I am currently unaware if this message will have lines 
with more than 70 characters or if newlines will be inserted by my 
client). This makes my patches look like they are not formatted 
correctly (and possibly become poorly formatted).

Thanks!

[0] https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2019-11/
[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/lists.html
[2] https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-help/2019-11/msg00091.html
[3] https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2019-11/msg01497.html

Re: Question about attachments on the mailing list

[Alexander Monakov]

On Fri, 29 Nov 2019, Erick Ochoa wrote:

> * I previously had some difficulties with how my e-mail client was rendering
> messages I sent to the mailing list [2][3]. Does anyone have any
> recommendations on e-mail clients / techniques to ensure that the way I type
> messages on my client is the way the messages will be displayed on the mailing
> list? (For example, I am currently using Thunderbird writing text only
> messages and Thunderbird wraps lines at ~70 characters. I am currently unaware
> if this message will have lines with more than 70 characters or if newlines
> will be inserted by my client). This makes my patches look like they are not
> formatted correctly (and possibly become poorly formatted).

You'll have to prevent Thunderbird from using format=flowed in your emails.
The kernel community has some documentation for setting up email clients for
emailing patches, please see https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v5.4/process/email-clients.html
(instructions for Thunderbird are towards the end of that page).

Alexander

Re: Question about attachments on the mailing list

[Christopher Faylor]

(Questions about mailing list mechanics that are not really related to
gcc help should go to gcc-help-owner or postmaster.  That should be
mentioned on https://gcc.gnu.org/lists.html)

On Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 02:40:53PM -0500, Erick Ochoa wrote:
>* Are attachments allowed? The policies [1] say that attachments for
>large messages are allowed. Are they not allowed for smaller
>messages?

Some attachments are allowed.  Your specific email was blocked because
it used application/x-zip-compressed which is a frequent method that
spammers use to obfuscate their payload.

>* I subscribed to the mailing list after sending my e-mail with the
>attachment. Are attachments only allowed for subscribers? The spam
>blocking section [1] says subscribers will not be subject to any kind
>of spam blocking.

The spam blocking section is wrong.  We block anything that seems to be
spam.  Subscribing only raises the threshold slightly.

cgf
aka postmaster at gcc /sourceware