From: Linus Torvalds Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 20:23:18 GMT Subject: Re: Git-commits mailing list feed. Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <7vis2d2rmv.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> On Sat, 23 Apr 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > If that is the case, can't you do it without introducing this > new tag object, like this? No, because I also want to sign the _name_ I gave it. Otherwise somebody can take my "signed commit", and claim that I called it something else. Just signing the commit is indeed sufficient to just say "I trust this commit". But I essentially what to also say what I trust it _for_ as well. And sure, I could make a totally bogus "commit" object that just points to the original commit, uses the same "tree" from that original commit, and write what I want to trust into that commit. I then sign that, and create yet _another_ commit that has the signature (and the pointer to the just signed commit) in its commit message, and then I point to _that_ commit. So yes, we can certainly do this with playing games with commits. That sounds singularly ugly, though, since just doing a "tag" object is a lot more straightforward, and really tells the world what's going on (and makes it easy for automated tools to just browse the object database and see "that's a tag"). Linus