Re: [PATCH 00/10] Spring cleanup of "contrib/"

[Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>]

On Tue, May 6, 2025 at 9:32 PM Todd Zullinger <tmz@pobox.com> wrote:
> Eric Sunshine wrote:
> > Although we periodically hear that someone uses it, git-contacts
> > probably falls into the "tool has a clear alternative" category. In
> > this case, git-related[*] is a separately-maintained more functional
> > drop-in replacement which people could be using instead of
> > git-contacts.
> >
> > [*]: https://github.com/felipec/git-related/blob/master/git-related
>
> It may be worth noting that git-contacts is suggested in
> both MyFirstContribution.adoc and SubmittingPatches.

I think I knew but forgot about those mentions. Certainly useful
information if Patrick decides to pursue retirement of git-contacts.

> It probably helps that since 824503ce88 (SubmittingPatches:
> clarify 'git-contacts' location, 2024-04-18) there has been
> a note stating this isn't "part of the core `git` binary and
> must be called directly." That is relatively recent, though.

Out of curiosity, I Googled git-contacts but didn't find any
meaningful hits. Pretty much the only pages found were renderings of
Git's documentation (including SubmittingPatches and the man page for
git-contacts itself), as well as the few patches to the Git mailing
list which introduced or touched git-contacts over the years. I did
not find any general discussion or recommendations to use
git-contacts, so perhaps it indeed is not very much used.

> I added git-contacts to the Fedora git packaging shortly
> after 92a5dbbc22 (SubmittingPatches: mention the git
> contacts command, 2018-04-11), presuming some readers would
> want to use it.  (I never want to penalize users who are
> diligent enough to read SubmittingPatches. :)
>
> All that said, I don't have any strong opinion on whether it
> is kept or removed, let alone when that might happen.  I
> don't know that I've ever used it, other than for testing
> that it worked while packaging it.

I've never used git-contacts either, despite the fact that I'm the one
who ported Felipe's git-related from Ruby[1] to Perl[2] for inclusion
in Git's "contrib" since the Ruby version had been rejected due to
being written in a language not already employed elsewhere in the
project. The Perl rewrite also included a number of useful
enhancements which Felipe later incorporated into git-related after he
published it as a standalone project. He has since extended it to
include even more features, so it's functionally a superset of
git-contacts.

By the way, Felipe also sent a patch series[3] eleven years ago with
the same intention of Patrick's series under discussion. Felipe's
series was never picked up but did undertake the retirement of
git-contacts.

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/1369986380-412-1-git-send-email-felipe.contreras@gmail.com/
[2]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/1374403962-48361-1-git-send-email-sunshine@sunshineco.com/
[3]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/1399662703-355-1-git-send-email-felipe.contreras@gmail.com/T/