Re: Git history author/committer fields (was Re: msdtc with 32-bit app fails to resolve in-doubt or not-notifed transactions)

On 06/26/2014 03:49 PM, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> On 06/25/2014 05:26 PM, Craig Ringer wrote:
>> Please merge branch fix-syswow64-msdtc from my repo at
>> https://github.com/ringerc/psqlODBC.git .
>
> Oh, and while you do that, please avoid creating a merge commit. I hate
> those merge commits when I browse the git history, they're just useless
> noise. Please use "git rebase" to clean up the history in your local
> repository first. You can use "git push --dry-run" before the actual
> push to see what will be done. It will print the commit IDs that it
> would push, something like this:
>
> a87a7dc..de42ed4  master     -> origin/master
>
> You can then do "git log a87a7dc..de42ed4" to see those commits.
>
> Also, it would be good to reset the author/committer information in the
> commit before pushing. Looking at the git history the other day, I was
> quite surprised to see commits from Craig, as I didn't know he's a
> psqlodbc committer. Then I realized that you had merged those commits
> from Craig's github repository :-). You can do "git commit --amend
> --reset" to reset them before pushing, but once you do that, should add
> a line in the commit message itself to give credit for the author of the
> patch.
>
> That's what we do with the PostgreSQL main repository, anyway. We could
> also decide to use the git's Author field to track the original author,
> but at least the Committer field should reflect the actual psqlodbc
> committer. I'm not sure how to change that without changing the Author
> field, though.

I did a little more looking.

It seems the general idea is to retain Author (so what's Committer for?)
and use the Signed-off-by stuff:

author: "git commit -s" (push/pull workflow) or "git format-patch -s"
(email workflow)

committer: "git commit --amend -s" (push/pull workflow) or "git am -s"
(email workflow)

Per:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2348911


I guess really it depends on what the history is supposed to be. I'm not
sure core is a good guide here, as the project pretty much adopted a
"git as a better CVS" workflow.

It looks like if you amend / rebase a commit, the committer field is set
to your details, but the author remains the same. That seems appropriate.

--
 Craig Ringer                   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
 PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services