Comment trailers vs. bracketed lines

From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com>
Date: Oct 20, 2024, 17:08 UTC
Message-ID: <ae56dc14-bbae-4d5e-a890-20735131d484@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20241019212135.GB589728@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Hi Peff

(editing the subject now which I intended to do from the start)

On Sat, Oct 19, 2024, at 23:21, Jeff King wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

>> On Fri, Oct 18, 2024, at 07:29, Jeff King wrote:
>> […]
>
> I assigned authorship to Ramsay, so my name is not otherwise mentioned,
> but appears in the signoff. So it was a way of mentioning what I
> contributed (both for credit, but also in case anybody has questions
> later).
>
> I guess "Commit-message-by:" would work, too. ;)

I’ve done that when someone has given me a non-descript diff. :)

Show 7 quoted lines

> I think in the usual trailer order, it would be:
>
>   Signed-off-by: Ramsay
>   [jk: add commit message]
>   Signed-off-by: me
>
> but I didn't want to forge his S-o-b without asking first.

I’ve seen those brackets in the log. They used to happen with some regularity. At first it made sense since you need a free-form area to both comment and tell everyone that you left the comment. And a trailer doesn’t make sense for that, I thought.[1]

But thinking about the signoff requirement: you already have all the information you need from the next trailer, namely the signoff. In other words this:

    [kh: Added tests]
    Signed-off-by: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <code@khaugsbakk.name>

Has the same information as this:

    Comment: Added tests
    Signed-off-by: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <code@khaugsbakk.name>

Because the signoff order tells you who left the comment. So I was wondering to myself why this uniform approach wasn’t used.

† 1: Since the brackets become “non-trailer values” or something
   (git-interpret-trailers(1)), i.e. the discarded parts of the trailer
   block