Re: Fwd: [Survey] Signed push

From: Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu>
Date: Sep 14, 2011, 10:45 UTC
Message-ID: <4E7085E6.3060509@alum.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <CA+55aFy0b+eozmzbKD4RXcJ7e3WCpf7BV1n1qXHOeEwSHZKOXw@mail.gmail.com>

On 09/14/2011 09:06 AM, Linus Torvalds wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> So I'm not against signed pushes, but quite frankly, if you add some
> per-branch signature, I would argue against it unless that signature
> also comes with information that allows us to do a better job of human
> communication too. Like a branch description.
> 
> Imagine, for example, than when you do a
> 
>   git push -s ..
> 
> git would *require* you to actually write a message about what you are
> pushing. And when somebody pulls it, and creates a merge commit, that
> explanation would become part of the merge message. The "signature"
> part of the "-s" should be thought of as the *much* less interesting
> part - that's just a small detail that git can use to verify
> something, but it doesn't actually matter for the contents of the
> pull. Not like the actual human-readable message would.
> 
> Now *that* would be lovely. No?

Instead of "like a branch description", why not implement branch descriptions directly?

I wish that one could annotate a branch (e.g., at creation) and have the annotation follow the branch around. This would be a useful place to record *why* you created the branch, your plans for it, etc. The annotation should be modifiable, because often a branch evolves in unforeseen ways during its lifetime. Anybody could read the annotation to get a quick idea of what kind of work is in progress.

Such a branch annotation could be used in pull requests, the cover letter of patch series emails, merge commit log messages, etc.

Michael

-- 
Michael Haggerty
mhagger@alum.mit.edu
http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/