Re: git commit messages

[Felipe Contreras <felipe contreras gmail com>]

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:09 PM, Christophe Fergeau <teuf gnome org> wrote:
> Hi Vincent,
>
> 2009/4/22 Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>
>>
>> - When committing code on behalf of others use the --author option, e.g.
>>    git commit -a --author "Joe Coder <joe coder org>" and --signoff.
>>
>> ========================================================
>>
>>
>> Opinions?
>
> Not sure about the --signoff part. The committer email/name is already
> silently added to the commit by git even when using --author. Moreover, When
> reading the "12) Sign your work " section of SubmittingPatches from the
> linux kernel source (
> http://lxr.linux.no/linux/Documentation/SubmttingPatches ), it seems to me
> that using SignedOffBy is useless if the initial author of the patch didn't
> use it :
>
> "The sign-off is a simple line at the end of the explanation for the patch,
> which certifies that you wrote it or otherwise have the right to pass it on
> as a open-source patch." (snipped a lot of explanations after this sentence)

s-o-b lines are useful if you are following a chain-of-trust model. If
you wrote the patch, you add your s-o-b, if you reviewed the patch and
think it's ok, then you add your s-o-b too.

The commit that goes into the main repo will end up having multiple
s-o-b lines and if something goes wrong all the people in the s-o-b
are to blame. If you commit a patch without reviewing it fully, then
don't add your s-o-b.

In a distributed model the s-o-b lines help people to decide whether
or not to pick commits from other repositories or a mailing list. The
more distributed, the more you need s-o-b lines.

In GNOME perhaps the needs doesn't seem too high right now, but think
about a patch that was developed collaboratively by 4, or 5 people. A
single 'committer' and 'author' field is not enough to represent what
really happened.

-- 
Felipe Contreras