From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Valerie Aurora Subject: Re: How best to handle multiple-authorship commits in GIT? Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 10:00:02 -0800 Message-ID: <9B990DDC-858D-43BA-BF9E-E0C3435354AF@gmail.com> References: <21056.1328185509@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (1.0) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Cc: "git@vger.kernel.org" , "dhowells@redhat.com" To: David Howells X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Thu Feb 02 19:00:20 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Rt0xF-0000Mm-9k for gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org; Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:00:17 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756885Ab2BBSAL (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Feb 2012 13:00:11 -0500 Received: from mail-pz0-f46.google.com ([209.85.210.46]:53993 "EHLO mail-pz0-f46.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754309Ab2BBSAJ convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Feb 2012 13:00:09 -0500 Received: by dadp15 with SMTP id p15so2034920dad.19 for ; Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:00:09 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=references:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-transfer-encoding :content-type:message-id:cc:x-mailer:from:subject:date:to; bh=YdcV+62STxG8B/euSXrtkqgQ9/zAiQ8d4lWgBZbOaD4=; b=TGyvjAEALI2oaa12GG6J2SGkgFzL5ZJHFnttOWo3hPV7tCS+JUxatuRZPootHcNuSN a97hvZqgkOoJoB/Ad6pOh949CsVsoTtMZABm+B/1dKIsXkl57afjER4Dg/1LL3YoX5bh 1MtfGfy4pVpBa3us8rhQeYpzBMPTjbo3VoK3g= Received: by 10.68.224.9 with SMTP id qy9mr9530726pbc.102.1328205609509; Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:00:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from [10.242.196.113] (68.sub-174-253-224.myvzw.com. [174.253.224.68]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id x8sm7128547pbr.11.2012.02.02.10.00.06 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:00:08 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <21056.1328185509@redhat.com> X-Mailer: iPhone Mail (9A405) Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Feb 2, 2012, at 4:25, David Howells wrote: > > Hi, > > I've been assigned a stack of patches to maintain and try and get upstream by > my employer. Most of the patches currently have the authorship set to Val, > but since I'll be maintaining them if they go in upstream and I've changed > them a lot, I feel I should reassign the author field to myself so people > pester me rather than Val with questions about them. However, I don't want to > deny Val or any other contributor credit for their work on the patches. > > I can see a number of ways of doing this, and am wondering which will be best: > > (1) Ascribe multiple authorship directly in the commit. I suspect this would > require a change to GIT and its associated tools. That way I could put my > name in the priority pestering spot, but doing a search on authorship > would still credit Val and others. > > (2) Add an extra tag 'Originally-authored-by' (or maybe 'Coauthored-by' as I > saw someone recommend) in amongst the 'Signed-off-by' list. But that > doesn't give them credit in a gitweb search without changing gitweb. > > (3) Don't actually modify Val's commits to bring them up to date, but rather > create a historical GIT tree with Val's commits committed as-are and then > add my changes to the top in a number of large merge commits (there have > been multiple major breakages due to different merge windows). > > I dislike this approach because it doesn't produce a nice set of patches I > can give to someone to review (which is a must). Plus, for the most part, > it's actually easier to port Val's patches individually. > > Can GIT be modified to do (1)? Gitweb's display need only show one of the > authors in the single-row-per-patch list mode, but should find a patch by any > of the authors in an author search and should display all the authors in the > commit display. > > David Thanks, David! I had the same trouble with my set: while I entirely rewrote some patches, I still felt Jan Blunck deserved primary credit. I don't recall my solution, but I'm fine with mentioning my name in the commit message (and I think Jan should get credit too). In general, this is a big problem for motivating contributors in other cases. Some maintainers have a habit of trivially rewriting patches so that, technically, no line is the same, then taking authorship and giving the actual author an ambiguous Signed-off-by. David hasn't done this here, of course - these are major rewrites - but when someone does all the hard work of finding and fixing a problem, the credit shouldn't go to the person who prettied it up. There is a line in the kernel doc saying how this should be handled, suggested by Rusty, but it's not being followed. First class support for multiple authorship would be a big way to motivate contributors. -VAL