Re: [PATCH/RFC] sequencer.c: record revert/cherry-pick commit with trailer lines

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 6, 2018, 01:44 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqva5bgetj.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8AzriX4YYSSZN-U06HHKgL9XmkJ1WhWbLo4LwZvECa8hw@mail.gmail.com>

Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> I think the intent of writing "This reverts .... " to encourage
> writing "because ..." is good, but in practice many people just simply
> not do it. And by not describing anything at all (footers don't count)
> some commit hook can force people to actually write something.
>
> But for the transition period I think we need to keep both anyway,

I do not see any need to qualify the statement with "for the transition period". You showed *no* need to transition, but I do agree that adding a fixed-spelled footer in addition to what we produce in the body is a good idea.

When we know a feature with good intent is not used properly by many people, the first thing to do is not talk about removing it, but to think how we can educate people to make good use of it.

And if we know a feature with good intent is not used by many people but we know that "many" is not "100%", why are we talking about removing it at all?

> Yep. I'll code something up to print both by default with config knobs
> to disable either. Unless you have some better plan of course.

Does it make sense to put both, with exactly the same piece of information? I am not sure whom it would help.

The tools need to be updated to deal with both old and new format if the pick-origin information is used, instead of getting updated to learn new and forget old format, as existing commits in their history do not know about the new format and their tools need to understand them.

I'd say it would be sufficient to have a per-repository knob that says which one to use, and between the release we add that knob and the release we make the new format the default, when we do not see the knob is set to either way, keep warning that in the future the default will change and give advice that the knob can be used to either keep the old format or update to the new format before or after the default switch (in addition to squelch the warning and the advice).