Outgoing mails should contain headers which prevent out-of-office replies

[bart@…]

When using ​email2trac, out-of-office replies will create comments to the ticket. This is because outgoing mail which gets sent by Trac doesn't set the Precedence or Auto-Submitted header, which let autoresponders know they should not reply to the ticket. Here's a simple patch which makes sure these headers get set for mail which is sent by Trac.

[bart@…]

Patch to set headers which prevent autoreplies

[bart@…]

For more information on the Precedence and Auto-Submitted headers, see the RFC on this subject: ​RFC 3834

[Christian Boos]

You should create this ticket on TracHacks, as the ​th:EmailtoTracScript software is maintained there.

[Christian Boos]

Hm, sorry, didn't realize at first that the patch was for Trac itself.

[Emmanuel Blot]

RFC2076 states that use of Precedence header is Non-standard,controversial,discouraged.
I'd therefore go for the Auto-Submitted header, but avoid applying the Precedence header.

Comments?

[anonymous]

I agree in principle, but in practice most servers don't look at Auto-Submitted yet. Exchange, for example, ​does look at Precedence: Bulk and Precedence: List but not at the Auto-Submitted header. So only setting Auto-Submitted isn't very useful currently.

[Emmanuel Blot]

Replying to anonymous:

I agree in principle, but in practice most servers don't look at Auto-Submitted yet. Exchange, for example, ​does look at Precedence: Bulk and Precedence: List but not at the Auto-Submitted header. So only setting Auto-Submitted isn't very useful currently.

Ok, so let's use the Precedence header as well. I also had a look at several ML engine, and they use this header as well, so it seems to be pretty standard even if its real effect seems to vary from one MTA to another.

I'll commit the patch soon.

[Emmanuel Blot]

Thanks for the patch. Applied in [5510].