Re: A generalization of git blame

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 26, 2012, 19:11 UTC
Message-ID: <7vfw64txa1.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <72fc15c78ddb6b5c9e95f6b0cd925a26.squirrel@webmail.cs.wisc.edu>

xmeng@cs.wisc.edu writes:

> Another question is that is it possible to include my tool as a git
> built-in tool in the future?

It largely depends on how the user would interact with your program, which is totally unclear as we haven't seen any part of it. I do not think we have enough information to answer the question at this point.

> I know that my tool is still not good for any release. But I would
> like to share my work with other people if other people are
> interested.

If it is a trivial script that largely depends on what we already ship, I would not mind carrying it in contrib/. If it is anything substantial and substantially useful, however, I would suspect that you are better off not be in in my tree, but rather want to be independent. Finishing it to be useful for your purpose, publishing it somewhere people can take a look at and adding a pointer to https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/InterfacesFrontendsAndTools is probably where you would want to start.

> And if it is possible, I think I will have a stronger motivation
> to make my tool more robust and useful.

I've seen from time to time people ask "I am thinking of doing this; will a patch be accepted? If so, I'll work on it." before showing any work, and my response always has been:

 (1) We won't know how useful and interesting your contribution be
     for our audience, until we see it; and

 (2) If you truly believe in your work (find it useful, find writing
     it fun, etc.), that would be incentive enough for you to work
     on it, whether or not the result will land in my tree.  You
     should instead aim for something so brilliant that we would
     come to you begging for your permission to include it in our
     project.

I think it applies to your inquiry as well.