Re: [PATCH] Keep committer and committer dates

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
Date: Jun 4, 2008, 14:22 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0806041015270.23581@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.61.0806041424140.1798@tm8103-a.perex-int.cz>

On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, Jaroslav Kysela wrote:

Show 23 quoted lines

> On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> 
> > Karl Hasselstr?m <kha@treskal.com> writes:
> > 
> > > On 2008-06-04 11:16:46 +0200, Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
> > > 
> > > > On Tue, 3 Jun 2008, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > That feels really funny, given that the guy running git-am _is_
> > > > > the committer, not whoever provided some extra headers to the
> > > > > mailbox.
> > > >
> > > > Yes, the implementatation does not make sense for public patch
> > > > handling, but if you do various things locally with git-rebase or
> > > > git-am (pack picking from another repo), you may consider it useful.
> > > 
> > > But still, you're creating new commits, so they should have your name
> > > on them.
> > 
> > Yes, if you are _creating_ *commits*, then you are *committer*, isn't it?
> 
> I agree with that, but if you just manage patches and you want to keep 
> commit history and change only hash numbers, it's an option. Nothing else.

Then the person performing that reshuffling _becomes_ the new committer for those commits with new hash numbers. Why would you like to hide that fact?

> It's just tool extension and users have to cleverly decide if it's worth 
> to use it or not.

I think this is against the purpose of the committer field to preserve it from a commit that was not made by you. What really really has to be preserved is the author field of course. But attributing commit action to someone else than yourself when you are the one reorganizing commits is misrepresentation.

> I just used in for my work.

Could you explain what your reason is for doing so?

Nicolas