Re: 23.0.60; emacs-report-bug fails silently

[Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc>]

On Sat, May 31 2008, Florian Beck wrote:

> Look, if you think my setup is bizzare, please ignore my report. But
> I don't think it is.

Me neither, see the sub-thread[1] about this in April on emacs-devel.

> I installed Ubuntu and used gnus to talk to my pop server. 

POP is only for fetching mail, not for sending.

> I didn't configure sendmail or a system mail client or
> `mail-user-agent' because everything worked – until after more then
> a year I realised that emacs bug reports were not delived, despite
> the message »Sending…done«.

Emacs (or Gnus) doesn't know that your Gnus configuration allows to
send mail, so it can't set `mail-user-agent' to `gnus-user-agent'.

Gnus (`message.el') tried harder than `sendmail.el' to figure out if
sendmail exists.  See the function and the variable
`message-send-mail-function':

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(defun message-send-mail-function ()
  "Return suitable value for the variable `message-send-mail-function'."
  (cond ((and (require 'sendmail)
	      (boundp 'sendmail-program)
	      sendmail-program
	      (executable-find sendmail-program))
	 'message-send-mail-with-sendmail)
	((and (locate-library "smtpmail")
	      (require 'smtpmail)
	      smtpmail-default-smtp-server)
	 'message-smtpmail-send-it)
	((locate-library "mailclient")
	 'message-send-mail-with-mailclient)
	(t
	 (lambda ()
	   (error "Don't know how to send mail.  Please customize `message-send-mail-function'")))))

;; Useful to set in site-init.el
(defcustom message-send-mail-function (message-send-mail-function)
  "Function to call to send the current buffer as mail.
The headers should be delimited by a line whose contents match the
variable `mail-header-separator'.

Valid values include `message-send-mail-with-sendmail'
`message-send-mail-with-mh', `message-send-mail-with-qmail',
`message-smtpmail-send-it', `smtpmail-send-it',
`feedmail-send-it' and `message-send-mail-with-mailclient'.  The
default is system dependent and determined by the function
`message-send-mail-function'.

See also `send-mail-function'."
[...]
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

`sendmail.el' just uses `sendmail-send-it' without any check if
/usr/sbin/sendmail (et al) even exist:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
;; Useful to set in site-init.el
;;;###autoload
(defcustom send-mail-function
  (if (and window-system (memq system-type '(darwin windows-nt)))
      'mailclient-send-it
    'sendmail-send-it)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Bye, Reiner.

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/94623
    http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/94336/focus=94623

,----
| From: Reiner Steib
| Subject: Default of send-mail-function (was: ...)
| To: Lennart Borgman
| Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
| Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:05:49 +0200
| Message-ID: <v9prt12x5e.fsf_-_@marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de>
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