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<title>Guidelines for Posting to the Subversion Mailing Lists</title>
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<h1 style="text-align: center"
>Guidelines for Posting to the Subversion Mailing Lists</h1>
<p>This document is based on years of experience with the Subversion
mailing lists, and specifically addresses the problems seen most
frequently on those lists. It should <i>not</i> be taken as a
complete guide to mailing list etiquette — you can <a
href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22mailing+list+etiquette%22&btnG=Google+Search"
>find one of those on the Net</a> pretty easily if you want one.</p>
<p>If you follow these conventions when posting to the
users@subversion.tigris.org or dev@subversion.tigris.org mailing
lists, your post is much more likely to be read and answered.</p>
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<div class="h2" id="where" title="where">
<h2>Where to post:</h2>
<p>Post to <a href="mailto:users@subversion.tigris.org"
>users@subversion.tigris.org</a> if you have a question about
Subversion, or if you think you've found a bug (developers read the
users list too, so they'll see your bug report). If you want to
discuss Subversion development, or post a <a href="#patches">code
contribution</a>, then mail <a
href="mailto:dev@subversion.tigris.org">dev@subversion.tigris.org</a>.</p>
<p>When in doubt, mail users@, not dev@.</p>
<p>Please do <i>not</i> post to dev@ as a last resort after failing to
get an answer on users@. The two lists have different charters:
users@ is a support forum, dev@ is a development discussion list.
When a support question goes unanswered on users@, that is
unfortunate, but it does not necessarily make the question on-topic
for dev@. (Of course, if the mail is about a possible bug in
Subversion, and got no reaction on users@, then asking on dev@ is
fine — bugs are a development topic.)</p>
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<div class="h2" id="when" title="when">
<h2>When to post:</h2>
<p>Sometimes, when really impassioned about a topic, it's tempting to
respond to every message in a mail thread. Please don't do this. Our
mailing lists are already high-traffic, and following up to every
message only adds to the noise.</p>
<p>Instead, read the entire mail thread, think carefully about what
you have to say, pick a single message to reply to, and then lay out
your thoughts. Occasionally it might make sense to reply to two
separate messages in a thread, but only if the topics have started to
diverge.</p>
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<div class="h2" id="formatting" title="formatting">
<h2>Formatting:</h2>
<div class="h3" id="line-length" title="line-length">
<h3>Line Length</h3>
<p>Please don't use lines longer than 72 columns. Many people use
80-column terminals to read their email. By writing your text in 72
columns, you leave room for quoting characters to be added in future
replies without forcing a rewrapping of the text. The 72-column limit
only applies to the prose part of your message, of course. If you're
posting a patch, see <a href="#patches">the section on
patches</a>.</p>
<p>Some mailers do a kind of automatic line-wrapping, whereby when
you're writing your mail, the display shows line breaks that aren't
actually there. When the mail reaches the list, it won't have the
line breaks you thought it had. If your mail editor does this, look
for a setting you can tweak to make it show true line breaks.</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="capitalization" title="capitalization">
<h3>Capitalization</h3>
<p>Capitalize the first letter of each sentence, and use paragraphs.
If you're showing screen output or some other sort of example, offset
it so it's clearly separate from the prose. If you don't do these
things, your mail will be <i>much</i> less readable than it could be,
and many people will not bother to read it at all.</p>
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<div class="h2" id="replying" title="replying">
<h2>Replying:</h2>
<div class="h3" id="reply-to" title="reply-to">
<h3>Reply-To</h3>
<p>Make sure to use your mailreader's "Follow-up" or "Reply-to-all" or
"Group reply" feature when responding to a list post. Otherwise, your
mail will only go to the author of the original post, not to the whole
list. Unless there's a reason to reply privately, it's always better
to respond to the list, so everyone can watch and learn. (Also, many
people who frequently get private responses to their posts have
indicated that they would prefer those responses to go to the list
instead.)</p>
<p>Note that the Subversion mailing lists do not modify the
<tt>Reply-to</tt> header to redirect responses to the list. They
leave <tt>Reply-to</tt> set to whatever the original sender had, for
the reasons listed in <a
href="http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html"
>http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html</a>, in particular the
"Principle of Least Damage" and "Can't Find My Way Back Home"
sections. From time to time, someone posts asking why we don't set
the <tt>Reply-to</tt> header. Sometimes that person will mention <a
href="http://www.metasystema.net/essays/reply-to.mhtml"
>http://www.metasystema.net/essays/reply-to.mhtml</a>, which
gives arguments in favor of modifying the <tt>Reply-to</tt> field.
The list administrators are aware of both documents, and see that both
sides of the argument have merits, but in the end have chosen not to
modify the <tt>Reply-to</tt> headers. Please don't resurrect the
topic.</p>
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<div class="h3" id="fresh-post" title="fresh-post">
<h3>Making a Fresh Post</h3>
<p>Don't start a new thread (subject) by replying to an existing
post. Instead, start a fresh mail, even if that means you have to
write out the list address by
hand. If you reply to an existing post, your mailreader may include
metadata that marks your post as a followup in that thread. Changing
the <tt>Subject</tt> header is not enough to prevent this! Many
mailreaders will still preserve enough metadata to put your post in
the wrong thread. If this happens, not only will some people not see
your post (because they're ignoring that thread), but people who are
reading the thread will waste their time with your off-topic post.
The safest way to avoid this is to never use "reply" to start a new
topic.</p>
<p>(The root of the problem is really that some mail interfaces do
not indicate that the message generated by the "Reply" function is
different from a fresh message. If you use such a program, consider
submitting an enhancement request or a patch to its developers to make
it show a distinction.)</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="rethreading" title="rethreading">
<h3>Re-threading</h3>
<p>If you do need to change the <tt>Subject</tt> header while
preserving the thread (perhaps because the thread has wandered into
some other topic), do it by making a post under the new subject with
the old subject in parenthesis, like this:</p>
<pre>
Blue asparagus
|
|_ Re: Blue asparagus
|
|_ Yellow elephants (was: Re: Blue asparagus) <i><-- ### switch ###</i>
|
|_ Re: Yellow elephants
</pre>
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<div class="h3" id="top-posting" title="top-posting">
<h3>Top-Posting</h3>
<p>Please don't reflexively chide people for top-posting.
"Top-posting" is the practice of putting the response text above the
quoted text, instead of interleaved with it or below it. Usually, the
quoted text provides essential context for understanding the response,
and so top-posting is a hindrance. Sometimes, people top-post when it
would have been better to inter-post or bottom-post, and others chide
them for this. If you must chide, do it gently, and certainly don't
bother to make an extra post just to point out a minor problem like
this. There are even situations where top-posting is
preferable — for example, when the response is short
and general, and applies to the entirety of a long passage of quoted
text. So top-posting is always a judgement call, and in any case it's
not a major inconvenience even when done inappropriately.</p>
<p>If you came here looking for advice on how to quote, instead of
advice on how to not flame people for their bad quoting habits, see <a
href="http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html"
>http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html</a> (Deutsch:
<a href="http://learn.to/quote">http://learn.to/quote</a>).</p>
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<div class="h2" id="patches" title="patches">
<h2>Sending patches:</h2>
<p>If you're posting a patch, start the subject line with
<tt>[PATCH]</tt>. This helps our patch manager spot patches right
away. If the patch addresses a particular issue, include the issue
number as well: "<tt>[PATCH] issue #1729: ...</tt>".
Developers who are interested in that particular issue will know to
read the mail.</p>
<p>Generate the patch with <tt>svn diff</tt> from the top of a
Subversion trunk working copy. If the file you're diffing is not
under revision control, you can achieve the same effect by using
<tt>diff -u</tt>.</p>
<p>If you can, send your patch as an attachment, using a mime-type of
text/x-diff, text/x-patch, or text/plain. Most people's mailreaders
can display those inline, and having it as an attachment allows them
to extract the patch from the message conveniently. Never send
patches in archived or compressed form (e.g., tar, gzip, zip, bzip2),
because that prevents people from reviewing the patch directly in
their mailreaders.</p>
<p>If you can't attach the patch with a reasonable mime-type, or if
the patch is very short, then it's okay to include it directly in the
body of your message. But watch out: some mail editors can munge
inline patches by inserting unasked-for line breaks in the middle of
long lines. If you think your mail software might do this, then the
patch must be sent as as an attachment.</p>
<p>Please include a log message with your patch. See the
<a href="hacking.html#log-messages">Hacker's Guide to Subversion</a>
for guidelines on writing log messages.</p>
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<div class="h2" id="encodings" title="encodings">
<h2>Languages and encodings:</h2>
<p>Please use ASCII or ISO-8859 text if possible. Don't post HTML
mails, RichText mails, or other formats that might be opaque to
text-only mailreaders. Regarding language: we don't have an
English-only policy, but you will probably get the best results by
posting in English — it is the language shared by the
greatest number of list participants.</p> <!-- Not bothering to
describe the exact headers we expect, but if we wanted to, it would be
something like:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15
and
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
-->
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<div class="h2" id="archives" title="archives">
<h2>Look before you post:</h2>
<p>Look in the FAQ, and maybe poke around in the mailing list
archives, before asking a question. The Subversion FAQ is here: <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html"
>http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html</a>. The mailing lists
archives are here: <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/SearchList?listName=users"
>http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/SearchList?listName=users</a>
(for <tt>users@</tt>), and <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/SearchList?listName=dev"
>http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/SearchList?listName=dev</a>
(for <tt>dev@</tt>).</p>
<p>A mirror of the mailing list archives, with a somewhat different
interface, is at <a href="http://svn.haxx.se/users"
>http://svn.haxx.se/users</a> (for <tt>users@</tt>), and
<a href="http://svn.haxx.se/dev"
>http://svn.haxx.se/dev</a> (for <tt>dev@</tt>).</p>
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