Currently 'darcs send' on Linux needs an MTA to send mail. But installing a full
blown MTA just for one command seems like overkill. Probably it should be able
to use the user's email client to do this instead, or alternatively talk SMTP
directly.

I agree this would also be a nice feature. Since the darcs project was started,
Haskell libraries have been released with compatible licenses that provide both
SMTP and TLS support: 

http://darcs.haskell.org/SoC/haskellnet/HaskellNet/SMTP.hs

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/ekarttun/hsgnutls/

Perhaps these would ease the implementation.

Peter Berry wrote:
> Currently 'darcs send' on Linux needs an MTA to send mail. But installing a full
> blown MTA just for one command seems like overkill. Probably it should be able
> to use the user's email client to do this instead, or alternatively talk SMTP
> directly.

darcs send has a --sendmail-command option that allows you to use your 
email client directly.  The manual has a couple of examples:

http://www.darcs.net/manual/node7.html#SECTION00764000000000000000

Hmm, after finding "--sendmail--command" and seeing how flexible it is...and
that mail sending reportedly "just works" on Windows already, I may have to
retract my vote for this feature.  From chatting with "HairyDude" on IRC, it may
satisfy him as well. Thanks, WorldMaker!

On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 19:20:56 -0000, Peter Berry wrote:
> 
> New submission from Peter Berry <pwberry@gmail.com>:
> 
> Currently 'darcs send' on Linux needs an MTA to send mail. But installing a full
> blown MTA just for one command seems like overkill. Probably it should be able
> to use the user's email client to do this instead, or alternatively talk SMTP
> directly.

SSMTP was designed for exactly this niche - it provides a sendmail
compatible interface and delegates to an SMTP server.

Is there similar SSMTP command for windows?

For windows we use MAPI (provided it's compiled in), which is the windows email
interface.  I have no idea whether it works.

Maybe it works for own Exchange server or Outlook client, but not for GMail.

techtonik wrote:
> 
> Maybe it works for own Exchange server or Outlook client, but not for GMail.
> 

Just set up Outlook or Thunderbird with GMail's SMTP?

Overkill, but nevermind - I've created sendmail emulator script in Python that
sends Darcs messages via GMail SMTP.

http://rainforce.org/python/

However, to use it conveniently it would be nice to have issue 769 and issue 768
fixed.

Discussion moved to issue 906.
We want this feature.