asf-tooling commented on issue #382:
URL:
https://github.com/apache/tooling-trusted-releases/issues/382#issuecomment-4410354477
<!-- gofannon-issue-triage-bot v2 -->
**Automated triage** — analyzed at `main@2da7807a`
**Type:** `discussion` • **Classification:** `no_action` •
**Confidence:** `high`
**Application domain(s):** `voting`, `web_api_infrastructure`
### Summary
This issue requests retry logic for failed vote email deliveries. The team
has been actively discussing the design direction. @sbp noted (2025-12-03) that
this depends on broader email architecture decisions (#209), and the 'current
implementation is a simple send direct to the relay, and this code will go
away.' @dave2wave noted it actually depends on #452. Most recently
(2026-04-20), @sbp stated the team is 'erring on the side of failing and
telling the user immediately' rather than silently queuing/retrying. The
current code has a behavioral issue where email send failures are swallowed as
warnings rather than surfaced to the user, which contradicts the stated design
direction.
### Where this lives in the code today
#### `atr/mail.py` — `_send_many` (lines 157-169)
_currently does this_
Low-level send catches all exceptions and returns them as error strings
rather than propagating failures, enabling the silent-failure pattern upstream.
```python
async def _send_many(from_addr: str, to_addrs: list[str], msg_text: str) ->
list[str]:
"""Send an email to multiple recipients."""
message_bytes = bytes(msg_text, "utf-8")
errors = []
for addr in to_addrs:
try:
await _send_via_relay(from_addr, addr, message_bytes)
except Exception as e:
log.exception(f"Failed to send to {addr}:")
errors.append(f"failed to send to {addr}: {e}")
return errors
```
#### `atr/storage/writers/mail.py` — `FoundationCommitter.send` (lines 64-85)
_currently does this_
Storage-layer send wrapper returns errors as list[str] without raising,
propagating the silent-failure pattern to all callers.
```python
async def send(self, message: mail.Message, category:
mail.MailFooterCategory) -> tuple[str, list[str]]:
models_mail.message_id_validate(message.message_id)
is_dev = config.is_dev_environment()
if is_dev:
log.info(f"Dev environment detected, not sending email to
{message.email_to}")
mid = message.message_id if (message.message_id is not None)
else util.DEV_TEST_MID
await _dev_email_log_append(message, category, mid)
errors: list[str] = []
else:
mid, errors = await mail.send(message, category)
self.__write_as.append_to_audit_log(
sent=not is_dev,
email_sender=message.email_sender,
email_to=message.email_to,
subject=message.subject,
mid=mid,
in_reply_to=message.in_reply_to,
)
return mid, errors
```
### Proposed approach
The team has explicitly decided (per @sbp's latest comment) to 'err on the
side of failing and telling the user immediately' rather than implementing
silent background retries. This issue is blocked by broader email architecture
decisions (#209 per @sbp, #452 per @dave2wave). Once those are resolved, the
implementation would likely involve either: (1) making the vote initiation task
raise an exception when email sending fails (so the task shows as FAILED and
the user can see it), combined with a manual retry button in the UI; or (2)
restructuring so the email is sent synchronously in the request handler rather
than in a background task, giving immediate feedback. Given @sbp's statement
that 'this code will go away,' the team expects a more substantial redesign
rather than incremental patching.
No diff is proposed because the team is still in design discussion mode, has
identified blockers on other issues, and @sbp indicated the current mail code
will be replaced.
### Open questions
- What is the status of #209 and #452 (the blocking issues)?
- Should the vote initiation task raise an exception when mail_errors is
non-empty (immediate fix for the current silent-failure behavior)?
- Will the email architecture redesign move sending out of background tasks
into the request handler, or keep it as a task with better error surfacing?
- Should there be a UI affordance for manual retry (e.g., a 'Resend vote
email' button on the vote page when sending failed)?
_The agent reviewed this issue and is not proposing patches in this run.
Review the existing-code citations and open questions above before deciding
next steps._
### Files examined
- `atr/mail.py`
- `atr/tasks/message.py`
- `atr/post/voting.py`
- `atr/tasks/vote.py`
- `atr/post/resolve.py`
- `atr/storage/writers/mail.py`
- `atr/get/voting.py`
- `atr/worker.py`
---
*Draft from a triage agent. A human reviewer should validate before merging
any change. The agent did not run tests or verify diffs apply.*
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