New mailmap file for the kernel

I made a new mailmap file for the kernel. I'll put it out on LKML tomorrow.

It takes a new philosophy, there is an entry for every email address in the kernel git tree even if the name associated with it is correct. I wrote a script and did a lot of manual editing to try and make sure that every one's name was spelled consistently. There are probably still some mistakes in it.

As a result of this clean up the number of unique contributors to the kernel fell from 4,284 to 3,821. A total of 463 errors or about 12% of all name/email pairs. We clearly need to do some validation.

Now that the file has every valid name/email in it is should be possible to validate the name/email in all new commits. When a new developer comes along we'll know it since they won't be in the file. Maybe Linus will send them a welcome message.

If a developer gets a new email address they need to add a new line with the address and their name being very careful to make it exactly match their name that is already in the file. If they want to change their name they need to make sure and change all copies identically.

Any ideas on how to best modify the scripts to achieve validation?

Hi,

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008, Jon Smirl wrote:

Note that this makes maintaining the list much more tedious. Of course, if you step up to maintain it, that is not an issue for others.

FWIW I think it is the responsibility of every contributor to quickly check if their credentials are correct, and provide a patch if they are not.

Unless somebody forgets, right?

Also note that in a distributed world, you cannot properly speak of a "new developer".

Kidding?

Ciao, Dscho

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 12:53, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

Unless there is a pre-commit hook that prevents you from committing when you are not in the mailmap. That should give enough incentive to first make a commit that puts you in the mailmap before you start sending in patches.

Yet we do it all the time on git.git ;).

Hi,

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:

And how exactly do you plan to make sure everybody has that hook installed?

Also, it would be a major hassle, just for the benefits of statistics (which, funnily enough, not everybody cares about).

But we are not truly distributed. Our community is small enough, and our maintainer good enough, that we do have a single upstream essentially. We do not even have lieutenants through which new developers could come (and therefore would be old developers once they hit master).

Ciao, Dscho

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 13:23, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

It needn't be installed with everybody, only at the people that form 'upstream' (in the git case that'd be Junio, in the Linux case that'd be Linus and his lieutenants).

Hmmm, I'm not sure if it would be a major hassle once it's set up? Once everybody has their name correctly in the mailmap nobody will have to care?

Ah, I did not realize that. Thanks for explaining.

On 7/28/08, Sverre Rabbelier <alturin@gmail.com> wrote:

That's the idea. The lieutenants would have the hook and stop anything that introduced new errors into the file. checkpatch.pl would get the same hook. And we'd make it available to all developers too. Someone want to help out are write the hook? My hands hurt from editing the mailmap file for too long.

We really need a hook to start the validation process. Putting all of the existing names in the file makes it easier to write the hook. I was surprised that 12% of all names in the log had errors in them. That's a terrible error rate.

Making sure nothing slips through is not that bad. Use git log to extract all email addresses. Run a script to ensure that they are all in the mail map file.Add the missing ones, there should only be a few. If the commit validation process works there shouldn't be any.

It's not just statistics, what it we had to contact everyone because of some licensing or patent mess? Mozilla has had to contact everyone three times now.

Bottom line this is Linus' call. Does he want a validation mechanism for names and email addresses in the log?