about bundle inside mail (was: [0.12] avoid MSG_WAITALL in tests)

[Andrew Bennetts]

Alexander Belchenko wrote:
> Martin Pool пишет:
[...]
> 
> >=== modified directory  // 
> >last-changed:mbp at sourcefrog.net-20061021023337-e517e
> >.... aadd87fc778
> 
> Last line matters.
> As you can see in the last line there is 4 dots instead of expected 3,
> so merging this bundle is failed with error

This line has only 3 dots for me, and gmane.org only has 3 dots as well:

    http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.bazaar-ng.general/18496

So I suspect it's a bug in your mail software.

It would be good if the bundle format included a simple checksum (e.g. a SHA-1
hash, which seems to be the hash du jour...) to catch bundles that have been
corrupted somewhere along the way.  Given the high probability that something in
the chain of sending MUA, intermediate SMTP servers, and receiving MUA, it seems
like a good idea.  We saw on IRC recently someone that had a problem because
gmane replaces "@" with " <at> " (even though it does get leading dots right).

I think it's probably friendlier to let a user know that a bundle is damaged,
than it is to report errors arising from trying to apply a damaged bundle (which
can cause errors that are likely to be confused with other causes, e.g. a bundle
relative to a revision you don't have, or a corruption of your local
repository).

-Andrew.