Re: Extra metadata in the commit?

From: Alex Riesen <raa.lkml@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 25, 2009, 09:49 UTC
Message-ID: <81b0412b0904250249k717ae07did24867bd6ca6e8a2@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0904250154080.10279@pacific.mpi-cbg.de>

2009/4/25 Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>:

Show 15 quoted lines

> On Fri, 24 Apr 2009, Scott Chacon wrote:
>
>> I'm working on a hg<->git bidirectional tool using Git as the
>> communication protocol, so there is a bunch of Hg metadata that I need
>> to keep in Git to ensure I can convert commits created in Hg back into
>> the exact same objects after they upload to the Git db and then come
>> back down.  This means storing explicit rename info, branch names, etc
>> somewhere without messing up Git clients that want to work on the same
>> repo.  So, I can keep this data in the commit message, but I thought it
>> would be cleaner to keep it as extra fields in the commit object before
>> the "\n\n" separator.
>
> I'd suggest keeping it in the commit body, for better visibility and
> easier handling by tools.
>

BTW, by the same convention we treat the very first line of a commit message specially, we can say that the last line, if non-empty (IOW, does not end with \n), is treated specially by UI tools (grayed out, for example):

  Subject\n
  \n
  Body\n
  \n
  something:very:special