Re: Git and --signoff, UTF-8

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Sat, 2009-04-04 at 18:43 +0100, Simos wrote:
> There are two issues that came up at gnome-i18n and are unclear regarding git.
> It would be good to get a position on this and I'll document for the GTP.
> 
> 1. Do translation commits require to have a --signoff?
> At the moment there is no git config option to automatically signoff
> a commit, and this would make it slightly cumbersome for translators
> to add manually.

We don't require --signoff for anything. Some people like using it when
committing a patch from someone else, but there also is the Committer:
tag, and in the context of a centralized repository, I don't see much
advantage in adding the --signoff. (If someone else is going to
cherry-pick the patch from your repository later, then Committer: will
be lost, but not --signoff)

Having a bug reference - # or ID is much more effective at conveying
review information for a patch.

> 2. What is the issue regarding UTF-8 in commit messages?
> This is mostly an issue with names of people.
> At first the reaction would be to simply use ASCII characters.
> 
> However, with git and git-send-e-mail, there will eventually be
> non-ASCII person names
> in commit messages.
>
> For this, it might be good to have an overall policy for UTF-8, and
> add to the documentation
> something like
> 
> git config --global format.headers "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"utf-8\""
> 
> Then, the policy could be either to refrain from using UTF-8 if it can
> be avoided or use UTF-8 at will.

See:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-infrastructure/2009-March/msg00037.html

AFAIK format.headers only affects git send-email / git format-patch.
Since translation patches are unlikely to be submitted by a contributor
by email, it's unlikely to have an effect there.

I see no reason to avoid using UTF-8. 

- Owen