Re: [PATCH] Keep committer and committer dates

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

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

> Of course it is possible!  I even pointed to a method!
>
> The _point_ was that we do not want to recommend it.  And giving prominent 
> support for it, such as introducing a command line parameter, _would_ 
> have the effect of recommending it.

The world is no black and white, but here are some guidelines to think
about this issue:

 - We need to be able to lie when we are importing from a foreign SCM.  We
   want to get identical import if two different people imported from
   exactly the same foreign history at two different times.  Obviously
   recording the person as the committer who happened to run the import
   does not work here.

 - When we are mechanically filtering a history (e.g. filter-branch
   --subdirectory-filter), the point of the rewrite is not about
   reorganizing the commits but tidying up the history.  We would most
   likely want to keep the committer here, too.

 - We encourage private history to be tidied up before publishing by
   giving flexible ways to cherry-pick and rebase.  On the other hand, we
   very strongly discourage rebasing other people's commits.  If you are
   rebasing your own commits, there is no need to lie.