Re: What's in a name? Let's use a (uuid,name,email) triplet

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@fluxnic.net>
Date: Mar 18, 2010, 19:12 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.1003181454160.31128@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <4ba27424.9804cc0a.4b1f.11b1@mx.google.com>

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010, Michael Witten wrote:

> So, forget the original generality and let's
> define the uuid as a SHA-1 of some EASILY
> REMEMBERED, already reasonably unique piece of
> information such as an old (name,email) pair.

Even with _that_, I bet many people will simply no bother. You may as well just use your current name and email address. Oh wait, Git is using just that already.

Show 14 quoted lines

> To make life easier on people, git tools could automate
> that process; to Junio, his just uuid is an old,
> unchanging (name,email) pair:
> 
>     $ git config --global user.name  "Junio C Hamano"
>     $ git config --global user.email "gitster@pobox.com"
>     $ git config --global --uuid "Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>"
> 
> which produces something like:
> 
>     [user]
>         name  = Junio C Hamano
>         email = gitster@pobox.com
>         uuid  = 6e99d26860f0b87ef4843fa838df2a918b85d1f7

Even then, some people _will_ manage to screw up some of their UUID configs. And you'll inevitably end up in the same situation that we have today i.e. different identification credentials that have to be mapped to the same individual.

> Could people still bungle the uuid or enter trash?
> Sure, but that's essentially no different than the
> current situation.

Exact.  So why bother?

> This would be an improvement, because at least some people would take 
> advantage of it; in fact, I bet most people would use it properly 
> because:

[...]

Most people _already_ use their name/email configuration properly. And those who really care are managing a stable email address already. so this is not an improvement at all but only some added complexity.

> Moreover, storing and using the SHA-1 uuid would be
> very efficient and allow for saner .mailmap hacks.

I don't buy that either. If anything, it is way better to fix the current .mailmap mechanism to catter for changing email addresses. That's what people use to contact people anyway as I doubt you could send any congratulations or job offers solely by using the Git's UUID. So you must link back to some form of email address in the end, and preferably the current one, otherwise the UUID is useless. In that case then why not simply using that email address in the first place?

The real solution is actually to improve the .mailmap so that any individual could decide that for this or that name/email pair to be found in the repository then here's the current email that should be displayed instead. Currently this applies partially and only to git-shortlog.

Nicolas