Re: tracking committer vs. author

From: Julian Phillips <julian@quantumfyre.co.uk>
Date: May 25, 2009, 23:28 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LNX.2.00.0905260015430.32620@reaper.quantumfyre.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <bbd12f0f0905251420l1ab63ca5y32589a4451064b9a@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, 25 May 2009, Jeff Brown wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> I have noticed that when we pull changes from non-committers into our
> repo, sometimes meta information about who committed the change to the
> repo is included along side info about who actually wrote the changes.
> For example, see
> http://github.com/grails/grails/commit/8ac450c37d16b0468ba0f92d3008968fd6a41a75
> and note that graemerocher has commit privileges to the repo but
> ihotary does not.  ihatory's commit was pulled in by graemerocher.
>
> The commit at http://github.com/grails/grails/commit/ff770359d152683d5794887cd743a10ce7d04501
> was also authored by a non committer.  I pulled that change in myself
> this evening.  Notice that there is no info displayed there to
> indicate that I (jeffbrown) am the person who pushed that change into
> the repo.
>
> I don't know what was done differently for those 2 scenarios but both
> of those commits were authored by folks who do not have commit
> privileges to the repo at
> http://github.com/grails/grails/commits/master.

You say "pulled" for both commits, but do you mean that in an exact git sense (i.e. 'git pull ...' command was used)? I assume not ...

If you pull from someone, then you get their commits, so they are the committer - on the other hand if you apply patches they have sent, then you become committer (though they remain the author of course) as you create new commits (containing basically the same changes and message).

If you compare the git repository (http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=summary) where all changes are made by Junio applying patches, to the Linux kernel (http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=summary) where Linus pulls from many (trusted) people you can see that while the commits in git are all committed by Junio, the kernel commits are made by a wide variety of people.

Show 6 quoted lines

> I don't think this is a github issue.  If I am wrong, please let me know.
>
> If I want to track not only who authored the commit but also who
> pushed it into the repo (like you see at
> http://github.com/grails/grails/commit/8ac450c37d16b0468ba0f92d3008968fd6a41a75),
> what is the procedure for making that happen?

This easiest way is to not pull from people who "don't have commit rights" but to apply a patch series instead, as by pulling you are basically trusting them - possibly more that you intend/want?

HTH,

-- 
Julian

  ---
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.