Re: RFD: fast-import is picky with author names (and maybe it should - but how much so?)

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 12, 2012, 22:47 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMP44s1gA1P-Lr1M=7RDRqFQmvQAtNnB+yAJfKC1gk3XUjbfCQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20121112214127.GA10531@sigill.intra.peff.net>

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 10:41 PM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 07:48:14PM +0100, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>
>> >   3. Exporters should not use it if they have any broken-down
>> >      representation at all. Even knowing that the first half is a human
>> >      name and the second half is something else would give it a better
>> >      shot at cleaning than fast-import would get.
>>
>> I'm not sure what you mean by this. If they have name and email, then
>> sure, it's easy.
>
> But not as easy as just printing it. What if you have this:
>
>   name="Peff <angle brackets> King"
>   email="<peff@peff.net>"
>
> Concatenating them does not produce a valid git author name. Sending the
> concatenation through fast-import's cleanup function would lose
> information (namely, the location of the boundary between name and
> email).

Right. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any DSCM that does that.

> Similarly, one might have other structured data (e.g., CVS username)
> where the structure is a useful hint, but some conversion to name+email
> is still necessary.

CVS might be the only one that has such structured data. I think in subversion the username has no meaning. A 'felipec' subversion username is as bad as a mercurial 'felipec' username.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras