Re: Adding Reviewed-by/Tested-by tags to other peoples commits

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> On Sat, 11 Oct 2008, Alex Bennee wrote:
>
>> I've just tested/reviewed a patch of someone elses and I want to forward 
>> it on the appropriate mailing list. I gather for Linux you just add the 
>> appropriate tags to the commit. Does git offer a shortcut for doing this 
>> or do you have to do a reset HEAD^ and re-commit with a copy&pasted and 
>> modified commit message?
>
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/75250/focus=76304
>
> In the end, nothing happened, but I could see that you might want to push 
> for this patch.

The fact a particular change has been reviewed is an attribute of a
commit, and by recording the fact once (perhaps when you commit for the
first time, or if your workflow is "commit blindly, then review, and then
amend" then when you amend that commit), the commit object will remember
that fact.

The patch you quoted adds Reviewed-by: at format-patch time, but I suspect
that is a wrong approach.  You have to remember and recall which ones you
reviewed (and which ones you didn't) when you run format-patch.  People
who commit and immediately format-patch to send, or people who do not
review until immediately before format-patch to send, would not realize
the downside of the approach, but when your work style is to perform
commit/review and e-mail communication in separate phases, it matters.

This is a bit tangent, but perhaps rebase needs a hook so that users can
strip certain tags automatically from the commit log messages (e.g.
things like Reviewd-by: and Tested-by: become less trustworthy when you
rebase; S-o-b: becomes somewhat less trustworthy when you "edit" in
rebase-i; etc).