Subject: Re: git push mirror mode

From: Andreas Ericsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:14:12 +0100

Andy Whitcroft wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 08, 2007 at 12:19:18PM +0000, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Thu, 8 Nov 2007, Andy Whitcroft wrote:
>>
>>> Ok, sometime back Junio sent out a proof-of-concept change to
>>> send-pack allowing a mirror mode.
>> You added/left his sign-off, but did not attribute the patches to him.  
>> Why?
> 
> I believe I left his signed off by from the original (first) patch, and
> added mine to indicate that what I had modified was also unecombered.
> The second patch is only signed off by me as I am the author.  In my
> world (admittedly a kernel hacker) the first Signed-off-by: indicates the
> primary authorship of that patch and the [apw@...] part tries to clarify
> the changes I made therein.
> 
> No intentional stripping of credit was intended, and I believe that the
> attribution as written states Junio is the originator of this patch.
> However that is the way I would read the meanings of these lines, if git
> has different rules or you think there is a clearer way of stating this
> I am happy to change it, and resend it so attributed.
> 

Barring any errors in my understanding of the matter, here's how it
works for git.

git separates author from committer, so code attribution is done with
author, and "I verified this is sane" is done by committer. Those two
usually only ever differ when the user tells git commit that the author
was someone else than him/her self, or when rewriting history with git
rebase or similar. git am also maintains authorship (using the From:
line in emails), but sets $committer to the person running it, so when
you apply patches sent by email from someone else you get the code
attribution right by default.

The Signed-off-by line is, in git, used as "I touched the code here and
agree that it may be included in the mothership repo and all future
releases" (the spirit of that sentence is also in
Documentation/SubmittingPatches).

We also have Acked-by (as does the kernel, no? I think we inherited it
from there) to mean something along the lines of "I vote we include this",
but not always based on technical merit (ie, patches can have many acks
without having ever been tested).

Suggested-by, Tested-by and Reported-by are used less often, not always
written in dash-form, but hopefully always self-explanatory ;-)

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   [email-masked]
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231