Robert Mast <beheerder@tekenbeetziekten.nl> writes:
> Your point on patch-breaking related to gmail and my proposal isn't
> completely clear to me, but I've probably addressed it well with my new
> approach.

The issue here is that many developers tend to develop a patch series
(perhaps with dozens of patches) as a single conceptual unit. When these
are emailed out, they are often sent as one thread with a new subject
for every patch. In particular, users of git and "git send-email" often
send patches this way. For what it's worth, it's my preferred way to
send and receive patches via email.

It's extremely useful for messages like this to be presented as a
single thread. This means that the dozens of messages don't clutter the
inbox, and it also allows for an operation to act on all of the messages
at once, (for example, notmuch provides "C-u |" which can apply all of
the received patches to a code repository in a single operation).

So, those of us accustomed to sending, receiving, reviewing, and
applying patches emailed in this way would be basically unable to use an
email program that split threads unconditionally on subject changes.

So it may be tricky to find a single behavior that would make everyone
happy. Perhaps a configuration option for splitting threads on subject
changes.

> I'll study the code for adding the option of unconditional (stripped)
> subject breaking on top of the existing thread-breaking.

Is there any existing thread-breaking? There wasn't the last time I
looked at the code closely, (but admittedly, that was a while ago).

-Carl