I think it is pretty common for a simple "darcs send" to fail for new  
contributors to a darcs-using project, for this reason: the project  
uses a subscribers-only mail list, and the developer is sending from a  
machine which sets a from address different from their list address.

This has happened recently on the happstack project, where it seems at  
least the first two or three contributors ran into this problem and  
didn't find the solution (specifying the correct address with --from).  
Instead they started planning a patch-forwarding subscriber (which  
might work but would probably lose attribution, making discussion  
threads less useful, and is an unnecessary additional setup hurdle).

I think this is/will be a pretty common scenario, and it would be nice  
if darcs-using projects and their new contributors didn't have to  
remember to add --from all the time. What to do ?

It might be worth promoting - somehow, somewhere - the use of a  
default from address setting. Ie, encourage users to add "send from  
my@address" to their ~/.darcs/defaults (or platform equivalent) on  
machines they are sending from. And/or, to suggest this to darcs-using  
projects as something that they should mention to their contributors,  
if they use a closed list.

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One simple thing that might help is to have darcs send display the  
from address that it used. This would help users notice the issue. It  
could also print a notice: "If you are sending to a subscribers-only  
list, set from address with use --from or defaults as needed".

Is this worth doing, Trent?

For this ticket, I propose two actions:

Firstly, the user manual describes the darcs send workflow.
This section of the manual should also warn about this issue.

Secondly, I think the easiest way to make the sender aware of
which From address they are using is to simply include all
outbound headers in the text file that --edit-description opens.

This would be similar to mutt's "set edit_headers=yes".

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 06:34:02 -0000, Trent Buck wrote:
> Firstly, the user manual describes the darcs send workflow.
> This section of the manual should also warn about this issue.

Ok.  Is this something you plan on working on?

> Secondly, I think the easiest way to make the sender aware of
> which From address they are using is to simply include all
> outbound headers in the text file that --edit-description opens.
> 
> This would be similar to mutt's "set edit_headers=yes".

Sounds like it would be ProbablyEasy

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 09:56:18PM -0000, Eric Kow wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 06:34:02 -0000, Trent Buck wrote:
>> Firstly, the user manual describes the darcs send workflow.
>> This section of the manual should also warn about this issue.
>
> Ok.  Is this something you plan on working on?

Inasmuch as I plan to overhaul all our documentation, yes.  The real
question is: when?  I dunno.

The following patch updated the status of issue1343 to be resolved:

* Resolve issue1343: mention darcs-users is subscriber-only, use --from. 
Ignore-this: e38c4cd6a447767a4b0bd95301a3f68
Introduce a HACKING stub that incorporates the useful data that the
issue1312 fix removed from building_darcs.tex.  Also tells people to
use Cabal for functional and unit testing, and --in-reply-to.