Re: [PATCH 1/1] commit: add support to provide --coauthor

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Oct 9, 2019, 20:31 UTC
Message-ID: <20191009203105.GA7007@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqr23mlkxo.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

On Wed, Oct 09, 2019 at 11:19:47AM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> > I wonder how we are supposed to use this trailer in the Git project,
> > in particular in combination with Signed-off-by.  Should all
> > (co)authors sign off as well?  Or will Co-authored-by imply
> > Signed-off-by?
> 
> I think we have been happy with (1) a comment at the end of the log
> message that says X worked together with Y and Z to produce this
> patch, and (2) the trailer block that has S-o-b: from X, Y and Z,
> without any need for Co-authored-by: trailer so far, and I do not
> see any reason to change it in this project.

One advantage to making a machine-readable version is that tools on the reading side can then count contributions, etc. For instance:

  https://github.com/git/git/commit/69f272b922df153c86db520bf9b6018a9808c2a6

shows all of the co-author avatars, and you can click through to their pages.

Show 7 quoted lines

> If other projects wants to use such a footer, that's their choice,
> but I am fairly negative to the idea to open the gate to unbounded
> number of new options for new trailer lines.  We do not even have
> such options like --acked=<acker>, --reported=<reporter>, for the
> trailers that are actively used already (and to make sure nobody
> misunderstands, I do not think it is a good idea to add such
> individual options).

Yeah, I'd agree that we should start first with a generic trailer line. There might be some advantage to building trailer-specific intelligence on top of that (for instance, it would be nice for coauthor trailers to expand names the way --author does). But that can come after, and might not even be in the form of specific command-line options. E.g., if the coauthor trailer could be marked in config as "this is an ident", then we we would know to expand it. And the same could apply to acked, reported, etc.

-Peff