Re: Linux v2.6.12-rc6

[Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk>]

On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 11:57:00PM +0200, Jesper Juhl wrote:
> On 6/6/05, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > >
> > > There is "From: Dmitry..." in the changelog. Do your script move first
> > > "From:" into author header and delete it from changelog? That would
> > > explain it...
> > 
> > Yes. But note how it doesn't even take the "first" From: line, it
> > literally takes the From: line _only_ if that line is the first line in
> > the email body.
> > 
> 
> A lot of times I see mails getting forwarded to you/Andrew/other
> maintainer by someone without adding a From: or other indication of
> who was the original author, but in almost all cases the original
> author is the one listed as the first Signed-off-by: since authors are
> the first to sign off on a patch, so, wouldn't it make more sense to
> pick the author like this ;

Not necessarily.  Re-read what Signed-off-by: is all about and who
may provide that line.  You should find that the first Signed-off-by:
line may not be the author themselves, but someone else who is able
to satisfy our requirements.

I think people will just have to accept that there's no way to _always_
_automatically_ get the proper author for every patch. (and that calling
it author in git was probably the first mistake - we never had these
issues with BK which didn't specifically indentify anything as being
the "author" as such.)

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 Serial core