Re: Semantics of change IDs (Re: Gerrit, GitButler, and Jujutsu projects collaborating on change-id commit footer)

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 15, 2025, 19:59 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqfrh5zlu5.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <CA+P7+xrruw=NUJgzV4D6CQbmGJO4CEjhkU_+qFDruD5YMsidDw@mail.gmail.com>

Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> At one point, the driver team I work for wanted to include Change-Id
> trailers to commits we submitted to the Linux kernel, for tracking
> against our own database (we used Gerrit at the time). They were
> rejected for this very reason of being an eye sore --  (possibly other
> reasons as well, I can't recall the full discussion).

For something to be an eye sore, it also has to be of no use to those who consider it an eye sore. The signed-off-by trailer is noisy and it becomes annoying after reading "git log --no-merges" for a week worth of commits, but it serves useful purpose so nobody would complain them as being an eye sore, even if they complain for other reasons.

Why weren't they seeing any benefit of having such trailer? Would they have found a good use of the information if it were hidden in the header part?

If the answer is "it is only useful to some people", what is the reason why those other people find it useless? Is it "our own database" being closed and there were no federated catalog of change-ids that can be used by all project participants? Or does it go beyond that, like what a Change-Id trailer means to project participants from one organization is different to those from another, or something?