Re: What's in a name? Let's use a (uuid,name,email) triplet

[Reece Dunn <msclrhd@googlemail.com>]

On 19 March 2010 12:25, Jon Smirl <jonsmirl@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 8:09 AM, Reece Dunn <msclrhd@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On 19 March 2010 11:54, Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org> 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.
>
> git already supports aliases via the .mailmap file. Pick one
> name/address pair that you like and then use .mailmap to map all of
> the variations into the primary one. Granted some git tools don't
> process .mailmap, but it is easier to fix the tools that create a new
> ID system.
>
> Look at the .mailmap in the current kernel tree. It fixes a few
> problems. I have a much larger one that fixes most address issues.
>
> You don't need to reimplement this aliases, they are already in git.

Indeed. I wasn't aware that mailmap catered for this as well.

- Reece