Subject: Re: Dealing with corporate email recycling

From: Sean Allred <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2022 08:35:00 -0500

Philip Oakley <[email-masked]> writes:
> Do you already have a map of those personal name and email name changes
> that are causing conflicts, or are you hoping for a way of detecting
> such changes? If you already know which names produce conflicts you are
> more than half way there.
>
> If you do know of the name conflicts, (e.g. when `John Doe` changed to
> `Jane Doe2`, then acquired `Jane Doe`, before being put back to `Jane
> Doe2`), do you have dates for the change over to map into the commit
> dates (assuming no slop or author/committer date slip). At least with
> the change-over dates you can apply mapping during the history transfer.

Whether or not we have maintained such a list in real-time remains to be
seen, but we have been able to put together such a list using both SVN
history and a variety of other internal data sources.  It's worth noting
that, if we do have to use this generated mapping, a mapping of over 10k
entries is surely to have the odd mistake every now and then.  So it's
not *totally* trustworthy (and never could be).

> An alternate option is to simply stick with the fact that history is
> messy, and use internal corporate knowledge for the few case that cause
> the major issues. It some point it always gets to be a Gödel Grammar
> (needing another rule).

This is definitely on the table, though it seems a shame to not attempt
to use the information we've been able to compile.

--
Sean Allred