From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: git-applymbox broken? Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:10:27 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: Junio C Hamano , Git Mailing List X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Mon Jun 12 21:10:56 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Fpro6-0006dT-6X for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Mon, 12 Jun 2006 21:10:38 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932080AbWFLTKe (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:10:34 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752192AbWFLTKe (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:10:34 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:51843 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752191AbWFLTKd (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:10:33 -0400 Received: from shell0.pdx.osdl.net (fw.osdl.org [65.172.181.6]) by smtp.osdl.org (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id k5CJASgt027697 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NO); Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:10:29 -0700 Received: from localhost (shell0.pdx.osdl.net [10.9.0.31]) by shell0.pdx.osdl.net (8.13.1/8.11.6) with ESMTP id k5CJARYu032215; Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:10:27 -0700 To: "Eric W. Biederman" In-Reply-To: X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0 required=5 tests= X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63-osdl_revision__1.75__ X-MIMEDefang-Filter: osdl$Revision: 1.135 $ X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.36 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Mon, 12 Jun 2006, Eric W. Biederman wrote: > > Below is an example of the kind of patch that inspired me to relax the > rules on parsing in body headers (this comes from Andi Kleen quilt tree). And this is wrong. We should _not_ accept crappy patches, and then start guessing at what the person meant. >>From the very beginning of git, I tried to make it extremely clear that there is never any guessing going on. We don't use "heuristics" except as a pure optimization: ie a heuristic can have a _performance_ impact, but it must never EVER have semantic impact. SCM's are not about guessing. They are about saving the _exact_ state that the user asked for. No "let's try to be nice", no gray areas. If the new git-applymbox just takes random lines from the body of the email, and decides that they may be authorship information, then that is a BUG. The "From: " line in the middle of an email may well be about somebody having _discovered_ the bug, and we're quoting him as part of the explanation. It does NOT mean that it's about authorship. So we should ONLY check for "From:" (and perhaps "Subject:" and "Date:") at the very top of the email body. NOWHERE ELSE. The fact that somebody has a crappy quilt tree, and the fact that quilt is very much a "anything goes" kind of laissez faire system does not mean, and should NEVER mean that git becomes the same kind of mess of "let's do a best effort and try to guess what somebody means" kind of thing. I check and edit my emails before I apply them, and I try to teach the people who send them manners and what the rules are. THAT is the way to handle this, not by having the tool itself become unreliable and random Linus