Re: [PATCH 2/3] git-svn: Add --add-author-from option.

From: Sam Vilain <sam@vilain.net>
Date: Apr 16, 2008, 22:24 UTC
Message-ID: <48067C83.4020209@vilain.net>
In-Reply-To: <20080416192312.GF3133@dpotapov.dyndns.org>

Dmitry Potapov wrote:

Show 29 quoted lines

> On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 11:36:26AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>   
>> It makes me wonder if there is a better way.
>>
>> For example, CVS honors LOGNAME to allow you to "lie" who the author of a
>> change was, which is the behaviour inherited from RCS.  I have to wonder
>> if SVN has a similar mechanism to tell it "Excuse me, but I am just a
>> secretary recording changes for my boss."
>>     
>
> Yes, there is such a mechanism:
> ====
> Revision Property (revprop)
>
> Just as files can have properties, so can each revision in the
> repository. Some special revprops are added automatically when the
> revision is created, namely: svn:date svn:author svn:log which represent
> the commit date/time, the committer and the log message respectively.
> These properties can be edited, but they are not versioned, so any
> change is permanent and cannot be undone. 
> ====
>
> So, it is possible not only set the real author but also date/time.
> Unfortunately, there is one problem with this approach -- by default,
> these properties are disabled from modification for security reasons.
> To enable modification of these properties, the administrator is
> required to change some hooks. Personally, I have never observed any
> SVN repository where anyone was granted the right to change them. So,
> while it is possible, it is impractical.

Yes, and in fact with most shared SVN hosting services the users are left with no option to do this.

While there doesn't seem to be a command-line way to do this, it's possible that a commit "editor" making a new commit can create revision properties without being necessarily subject to those restrictions. Possible, but I guess unlikely as it would then be inconsistent.

The usual thing is to dump the extra information in the commit message. Some projects, like Perl, were quite systematic about this and a lot of useful author information is available. In fact, it was saved in the proposed form.

While not the main thrust of this thread, the usual convention for mapping svn committers to names is a project AUTHORS file. This made me wonder whether allowing git-svn to take its author map from the repository, such as from a revision property or a directory property of the root or project would be a good idea.

Sam