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Re: co-authoring commits

From
Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Date
Jun 17, 2015, 22:52 UTC
Message-ID
<20150617225224.GF4076@thunk.org>
In-Reply-To
<CAOvwQ4j2bjR1jnLVyZbw1OCE=xQxbCEFGKcK1bpuv1K3s_Y2EQ@mail.gmail.com>
On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 10:26:32PM +0200, Tuncer Ayaz wrote:
Show 7 quoted lines
> 
> By allowing multiple authors, you don't have to decide who's the
> primary author, as in such situations usually there is no primary at
> all. I sometimes deliberately override the author when committing and
> add myself just as another co-author in the commit message, but as
> others have noted it would be really great if we can just specify
> multiple authors.

Just recently, there a major thread on the IETF mailing list where IETF working group had drafts where people were listed as co-authors without their permission, and were upset that the fact that their name was added made it seem as if they agreed with the end product. (i.e., that they were endorsing the I-D). So while adding formal coauthor might solves (a few) problems, it can also introduce others.

Ultimately there is one person who can decide which parts of the changes to put in the commit that gets sent to the maintainer. So there *is* someone who is the primary author; the person who takes the final pass on the patch and then hits the send key.

One could imagine some frankly, quite rare example where there is a team of people who votes on each commit before it gets sent out and where everyone is equal and there is no hierarchy. In that case, perhaps you could set the from field to a mailing list address. But honestly, how often is that *all* of the authors are completely equal[1]?

In my personal practice, if I make significant changes to a patch, I will indeed simply change the submitter, and then give credit the original author. This is the case where I'm essentially saying, "Bob did a lot of work, but I made a bunch of changes, so if things break horribly, blame *me*, not Bob".

Alternatively, if I just need to make a few cosmetic changes to Alice's patch (i.e., fix white spaces, correct spelling, change the commit description so it's validly parsable and understandable English, etc.), I'll just add a comment in square brackets indicating what changes I made before I committed the change. This seems to work just fine, and I don't think we should try to fix something that isn't broken.

						- Ted

[1] Gilbert and Sullivan attacked this notion is a commedic way in "The Gondoliers"; especially in the songs "Replying we sing as one individual" and "There Lived a King":

	     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD0dgXTQ3K0
	     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSaVdqcDgZc
Previous: Jakub NarębskiNext: josh@joshtriplett.org
Message 14 of 20 in “co-authoring commits”
  1. Tuncer AyazJun 17, 2015
  2. Junio C HamanoJun 17, 2015
  3. Tuncer AyazJun 17, 2015
  4. Junio C HamanoJun 17, 2015
  5. josh@joshtriplett.orgJun 17, 2015
  6. josh@joshtriplett.orgJun 17, 2015
  7. Junio C HamanoJun 17, 2015
  8. Tuncer AyazJun 17, 2015
  9. josh@joshtriplett.orgJun 17, 2015
  10. Junio C HamanoJun 17, 2015
  11. Jakub NarębskiJun 18, 2015
  12. Jeff KingJun 19, 2015
  13. Jakub NarębskiJun 19, 2015
  14. Theodore Ts'oJun 17, 2015
  15. josh@joshtriplett.orgJun 17, 2015
  16. Jason PyeronJun 18, 2015
  17. Tuncer AyazJun 18, 2015
  18. Jakub NarębskiJun 19, 2015
  19. Tuncer AyazJun 19, 2015
  20. Jakub NarębskiJun 19, 2015

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

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