Re: I lost my commit signature

From: Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net>
Date: Jun 17, 2016, 08:18 UTC
Message-ID: <171543e4-a343-c6d2-aa9a-2098db5b42ec@drmicha.warpmail.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqr3bx5ahp.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

Junio C Hamano venit, vidit, dixit 16.06.2016 19:06:

Show 27 quoted lines

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
>> But why does somebody run "commit -S" for a single commit, but not all
>> the time? Is it because that commit is special? Or is that particular
>> moment special? One implies that it's important for the signature to be
>> retained during a rebase, and one does not.
>>
>> So I dunno. I would not be opposed to such a feature, but I'm having
>> trouble figuring out why it would be useful (though for the most part, I
>> do not see why anything but per-project commit.gpgSign config is
>> particularly useful. Maybe I just lack imagination).
> 
> I am not so imaginative, either. One remotely plausible use case may
> be a project that has two classes of paths (let's call these classes
> sensitive and others), and requires its participants to sign commits
> that touch sensitive paths.  The user needs something finter grained
> than per-project commit.gpgSign there.
> 
> But even in such a case, the fact that an original commit is with a
> signature should not be a good indication that the rewritten version
> of that commit in the new history still touches the sensitive paths
> that required the original to be signed (i.e. the history the user
> is rebasing onto may already have the necessary changes to these
> paths).
> 
> So, I dunno, either.
>

While I follow both of your lines of argumentation, I tend to claim that they imply: there is no reason to blindly sign any commit... We should dump that config :)

Since it's not possible to sign commits after the fact without rebasing (they are not "notes" attached to a commit but part of the commit) it is very conceivable to me that you build up your work with fine-grained commits and then, at some point where everything is ready and carefully inspected, you sign it. There are various possible reasons why you may not be able to rebase at that point. (I don't know why one wouldn't want to use signed tags here, but I never understood the need for signed commits in the first place.)

I guess users of signed commits with rebase should speak up so that we can serve them well.

Michael