Re: Request for git merge --signoff

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 1, 2017, 22:15 UTC
Message-ID: <87fueferd4.fsf@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAHv71zK5SqbwrBFX=a8-DY9H3KT4FEyMgv__p2gZzNr0WUAPUw@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Jul 01 2017, Dan Kohn jotted:

> https://github.com/coreinfrastructure/best-practices-badge is a user
> of the https://github.com/probot/dco bot which checks that commits
> have a signoff. The issue is that there is no `--signoff` option in
> git for merge commits.

I think it's fine to add such a feature, but it seems like an obvious bug to me in such a bot[1] that it's enforcing the DCO on merge commits.

The entire point of the DCO is to certify that you have the rights to submit the patch etc., it's quite dubious to be applying that to merge commits which contain no original work (most of the time, although of course a merge commit can have significant conflict resolution).

So yeah, it would make sense to have a --signoff option, especially to use when the merge actually does contain original work, but your stated reason for wanting this just seems like an easily solved bug in the bot: Exclude those commits that have no patch contents.

1. https://github.com/probot/dco/