Re: Wildcards in mailmap to hide transgender people's deadnames

From: René Scharfe <l.s.r@web.de>
Date: Sep 14, 2022, 07:40 UTC
Message-ID: <854127f2-55aa-5636-813d-d91b8a4cdcbc@web.de>
In-Reply-To: <2e846a72-a4c6-2a5a-255a-15eee037f574@fwdekker.com>

Am 13.09.22 um 23:53 schrieb Florine W. Dekker:

> Now, John can now add the following line to their mailmap config:
> `John Doe <john.doe@example.com> <\*.doe@example.com>`, which does
> not reveal their old name.

That would falsely attribute the work of possible future developers ann.doe@example.com and bob.doe@example.com to John as well.

Supporting hashed entries would allow for a more targeted obfuscation. That was discussed a while ago: https://lore.kernel.org/git/20210103211849.2691287-1-sandals@crustytoothpaste.net/

> Someone could always spend more effort to uncover the name using more
> advanced tools, but the point of this feature is to prevent
> accidental discovery of the name in cases where completely hiding the
> name is not feasible.

Extracting old email addresses from a repository is easy by comparing authors' email addresses without and with mailmap applied, no advanced tools required. Here's mine from Git's own repo:

   $ git log --format='%ae %aE' |
     awk '$1 != $2 && !a[$0] {a[$0] = 1; print}' |
     grep -F l.s.r@web.de
   rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx l.s.r@web.de

The same can be done with names (%an/%aN).

René