From: Michael Witten Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:16:27 GMT Subject: Re: What's in a name? Let's use a (uuid,name,email) triplet Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <3f4fd2641003190509j6e4908e4kab87b601d2ce9c00@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 06:09, Reece Dunn wrote: > On 19 March 2010 11:54, Mike Hommey wrote: >> On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 04:45:38AM -0700, david@lang.hm wrote: >>> here is where you are missing the point. >>> >>> no, there is not 'much less chance' of it getting messed up. >>> >>> you seem to assume that people would never need to set the UUID on >>> multiple machines. >>> >>> if they don't need to set it on multiple machines, then the >>> e-mail/userid is going to be reliable anyway >>> >>> if they do need to set it on multiple machines and can't be bothered >>> to keep their e-mail consistant, why would they bother keeping this >>> additional thing considtant? Linus is pointing out that people don't >>> care now about their e-mail and name, and will care even less about >>> some abstract UUID >>> >>> people who care will already make their e-mail consistant. >> >> While I don't agree with the need for that uuid thing, I'd like to >> pinpoint that people who care can't necessarily make their e-mail >> consistant. For example, Linus used to use an @osdl.org address, and >> he now uses an @linux-foundation.org address. It's still the same Linus, >> but the (name, email) pair has legitimately changed. > > So create an aliases list that maps one (name,email) to another that > is from the same person. There is no need for an additional item (a > uuid) to solve this problem. It also means that searching on any > (name,email) pair will find the others, so you only need to > remember/find one of the identities for the person you are interested > in finding the commits for. > > AFAICS, mailmap is about correcting mistakes (primarily in the > reported name for a given email address). In this case, mailmap and > this aliases-map will work in conjunction with each other to give what > the original poster wanted. However, I haven't seen any of his replies > that answer this (or sufficiently address why mailmap does not solve > his problem). See: http://marc.info/?l=git&m=126900051102958&w=2 The idea is to distribute the responsibility for maintaining a consistent identity AND to make that responsibility EASY. The extra uuid `field' can only suffer from typos, while the name/email pair can suffer from typos, changing email accounts, and changing real life names. If the uuid `field' does get bungled by a typo or is not used, then we're no worse off than we were before.