Plan for SMTP 7.x-1.8 release

Great to see this module getting some much-needed love. Thanks @Chris Matthews!

Obviously it makes sense to apply the RTBC patches. However for me those did not fully address the issues I was having with DMARC fails, which were sending a lot of site emails into the recipient's (and site owner's) spam folders.

On my server, I found that I had to set the message 'From' to an email address matching the originating domain, as well as ALL of the relevant headers:

$headers['From']
$headers['Sender']
$headers['Return-Path']

I've submitted a patch at

#1686588: Use From address properly

that takes care of this, and I believe that it also incorporates

#2840624: Allow from_name override from code
and
#2886894: Add Reply-To header even if it's the same as the Return-Path header

functionality as well.

I'm not sure what's going on, but you may want to take a look at: https://www.drupal.org/project/smtp/issues/3091301

To prevent confusion with 7.x-2.x branch, do you guys think we should release it as 7.x-3.0?

Sounds like a good idea to me, and would presumably prevent the problem where you unintentionally get the 2x branch when you download with drush --dev.

Anyone else has an opinion on this topic? Otherwise, the next release will be 7.x-3.0

What 2.x branch?

The last D7 release was more than 3 years ago.

There have been 20 commits to the D7 branch since then, including fixes for PHP 7.2 support and TLS support.

We should release a new D7 version to ensure these 20 bug fixes/new features become available to the community, since the vast majority of users don't use the -dev.

Perhaps first make a quick review of the issue queue to see if there are any open issues in D7 that can/should be fixed for the new release? It's not a good idea IMO to delay a new release until all the known issues are fixed, but if there are some RTBC or easily-fixed issues then now is the time to finish those and push them out into the new release. A good plan might be to fix whatever can be accomplished in say the next week or so, then put out a release before 1 December regardless of what remains undone.

To prevent confusion with 7.x-2.x branch, do you guys think we should release it as 7.x-3.0?

While I understand that the no-longer supported 7.x-2.x branch can cause some confusion (see #3091301: Clarification on current status of 7.x-2.x branch), creating a 3.0 release just adds to the confusion because there are no API changes or other changes that would justify a new major point release. The next release should be 7.x-1.8, as stated in the title of this thread.

The Drupal 7 version of SMTP is basically in maintenance-only status right now, as D7 is nearing its end-of-life. Every effort should be made to keep it working and to fix bugs, but I don't see the need to ever open a new major-point development branch for D7 at this point.

I don't think #2295773: D7.x: Update PHPMailer to v6.0 should be a blocker for the next release, since that issue seems big. It might require a new branch.

Can we get a new release now? As stated above, PHPMailer 6.0 shouldn't be in this release. Also, looking at #2919816: Don't back out of sending mail if one of the recipients is invalid it seems that this issue wouldn't even be necessary if PHPMailer moves to 6.0. Yet, even after saying we don't understand the patch, there was no more feedback.

These two issues don't seem to be that important. Let's get 7.x-1.8 out the door right now.

I am a new/recently added co-maintainer and would like to hear thoughts from senior maintainers of the module. If everyone is fine I don't think we have a problem releasing 7.x-1.8. We can make quick or small fixes and make a release and then we can work on other 7.x issues like the phomailer 6.

As I am a co-maintainer I don't have rights to make a release.

Thanks,
Sadashiv.

I have a site that heavily relies on this module, and I've been avoiding upgrading core to 7.76+ since that update broke this module for many people.

I haven't got around to testing the various fixes that have been submitted, but it's critical that a 1.8 release works with 7.76+, and also incorporates the various RTBC patches that are equally critical to making this module send emails that pass DMARC testing for sites on all kinds of server configurations, so site emails don't go straight to junk or get blocked entirely.

I guess it's due to how non-trivial that is that it's been so long since the last release.

@arvana -- Have you had issues with the most recent version of Drupal 7 and the 7.x-2.x-dev version of smtp? Or are you using the last major release?

I don't think we should make a 3.x branch, since D7 is getting near EOL. If you want new features like PHPMailer 6, use Drupal 9+.

@japerry sorry to take so long to reply. I'm currently using the 7.x-2.x-dev version of smtp with all RTBC patches applied, and most recent version of Drupal. As far as I know it is working correctly.

There is this patch as well, I am trying the module out but keep getting timeout troubles using ssl and port 465

https://www.drupal.org/project/smtp/issues/2781157

This was released: https://www.drupal.org/project/smtp/releases/7.x-1.8

(leaving for the maintainers to update the issue to assign the attribution)