Re: RFD: fast-import is picky with author names (and maybe it should - but how much so?)

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 8:25 PM, A Large Angry SCM <gitzilla@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/10/2012 01:43 PM, Felipe Contreras wrote:

>> So, the options are:
>>
>> a) Leave the name conversion to the export tools, and when they miss
>> some weird corner case, like 'Author<email', let the user face the
>> consequences, perhaps after an hour of the process.
>>
>> We know there are sources of data that don't have git-formatted author
>> names, so we know every tool out there must do this checking.
>>
>> In addition to that, let the export tool decide what to do when one of
>> these bad names appear, which in many cases probably means do nothing,
>> so the user would not even see that such a bad name was there, which
>> might not be what they want.
>>
>> b) Do the name conversion in fast-import itself, perhaps optionally,
>> so if a tool missed some weird corner case, the user does not have to
>> face the consequences.
>>
>> The tool writers don't have to worry about this, so we would not have
>> tools out there doing a half-assed job of this.
>>
>> And what happens when such bad names end up being consistent: warning,
>> a scaffold mapping of bad names, etc.
>>
>>
>> One is bad for the users, and the tools writers, only disadvantages,
>> the other is good for the users and the tools writers, only
>> advantages.
>>
>
> c) Do the name conversion, and whatever other cleanup and manipulations
> you're interesting in, in a filter between the exporter and git-fast-import.

Such a filter would probably be quite complicated, and would decrease
performance.

-- 
Felipe Contreras