Re: [PATCH 0/6][Outreachy] commit: Implementation of "amend!" commit

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 23, 2021, 19:55 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqeeh61rv9.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <20210217072904.16257-1-charvi077@gmail.com>

Charvi Mendiratta <charvi077@gmail.com> writes:

Show 14 quoted lines

> This patch series teaches `git commit --fixup` to create "amend!" commit
> as an alternative that works with `git rebase --autosquash`. It allows to
> fixup both the content and the commit message of the specified commit.
> Here we add two suboptions to the `--fixup`, first `amend` suboption that
> creates an "amend!" commit. It takes the staged changes and also allows to
> edit the commit message of the commit we are fixing.
> Example usuage:
> git commit --fixup=amend:<commit>
>
> Secondly, `reword` suboption that creates an empty "amend!" commit i.e it
> ignores the staged changes and only allows to reword/edit the commit message
> of the commit we are fixing.
> Example usuage:
> git commit --fixup=reword:<commit>

We used to have only --fixup that was meant to squeeze in minor corrections to the contents recorded, and it kept the log message of the original commit intact.

Now we have two other ways, --fixup=reword that is meant to correct only the log message while keeping the contents intact from the original, and --fixup=amend that is meant to allow users to do both. They are nice additions to our toolbox.

While trying to use the --fixup=amend myself to "touch up" somebody else's work today, another thing that we did not discuss so far came to my mind (sorry, if this was discussed and resolved in your previous discussions with other reviewers). What should we do to the authorship?

For the original --fixup, it is reasonably obvious that the original authorship should be kept, as the intended use case is to make a small tweak that does not change the intention of the commit in any way (and that is why the log message from the original is kept), and with --fixup=reword, it would probably be the same (the contents were written by the original author alone, and the person fixing-up is not changing only the log message). So these two have a reasonably good default model for the authorship information for the final outcome: the original authorship should be kept (of course, the user can easily take over the authorship later with "git commit --amend --reset-author" perhaps run as part of "rebase -i", if the contribution is significant enough to deserve the transfer of the authorship).

But I am not sure what the default behaviour for the authorship when --fixup=amend:<commit> is used to update somebody else's commit. I think it is OK to leave it to whatever the code happens to do right now (simply because I have no strong reason to vote for either way between keeping the original and letting the amending user take it over), but I think it should be documented what happens in each case.

Thanks.