Subject: Re: [PATCH] Update git-multimail to version 1.0.2

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2015 00:20:02 -0700

Michael Haggerty <[email-masked]> writes:

> On 04/27/2015 09:05 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> ...
>> Hmm, that may be technically correct but it is grossly misleading to
>> update the existing "was obtained on 2014-04-07" to "was obtained on
>> 2015-04-27", especially if nothing was actually obtained, isn't it?
> ...
> It's true that only documentation changes are in the patch, but it still
> seemed like good practice to create a tag and all that. If nothing else,
> it will make it easier to figure out the baseline for future code drops.

Oh, there is no question about that ;-)

> There have been a couple of small software changes in git-multimail's
> master branch, but I didn't include those in the patch I submitted to
> you because I thought you wouldn't want to have code changes so close to
> the release. So 1.0.2 is on the newly-created "maint" branch.

OK.

>> I honestly am surprised that, after seeing the announcement about "a
>> new repository, co-maintainer and multiple contributors", no code
>> change is made over the past 12 months.
>
> I totally understand your disappointment. Mea culpa.

I am not *disappointed* at all.  No recent changes do not
automatically mean abandoned software---it may be a sign of
stability.  I was just *surprised*.

After all, 1.0.2 tag will hopefully soon become stale, and people
have to go to the upstream to see what the latest version is called
anyway, instead of looking at my tree.  So the primary value of
having a copy in my tree is (1) to have the URL for the true
upstream and (2) to have a working version that is not too stale.
So from that point of view, a patch without the update to the
version numbers or datestamps, i.e. just changes the URLs and
updates who to contact, would have been more truthful, unless it
also updated the code.

It was just that the update changed "the last obtained date" without
changing anything of substance that was "obtained" (because there
wasn't anything new to be obtained) and that looked unexpected and
surprised me.  That's all.