[Python-Dev] patch metadata - to use or not to use?

[Guido van Rossum]

On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 2:52 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 6:42 PM, Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml at behnel.de> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I recently got some patches accepted for inclusion in 3.3, and each time,
>> the patch metadata (such as my name and my commit comment) were stripped by
>> applying the patch manually, instead of hg importing it. This makes it clear
>> in the history who eventually reviewed and applied the patch, but less
>> visible who wrote it (except for the entry in Misc/NEWS).
>>
>> I didn't see this mentioned in the dev-guide. Is it being considered the
>> Right Way To Do It?
>
> Generally speaking, it's more useful for the checkin metadata to
> reflect who actually did the checkin, since that's the most useful
> information for the tracker and buildbot integration. The question of
> did the original patch does matter in terms of giving appropriate
> credit (which is covered by NEWS and the commit message), but who did
> the checkin matters for immediate workflow reasons (i.e. who is
> responsible for dealing with any buildbot breakage, objections on
> python-dev, objections on the tracker, etc).
>
> One of the key aspects of having push rights is that we're the ones
> that take responsibility for the state of the central repo - if we
> stuff it up and break the build (either because we missed something on
> review, or due to cross-platform issues), that's *our* problem, not
> usually something the original patch contributor needs to worry about.

Well, it doesn't hurt to keep the patch author in the loop about those
-- they may know their patch best and they may even learn something
new, which might make their future patches better! Of course if they
*don't* know how to fix an issue (e.g. if it's a platform-specific
thing) then they shouldn't be blamed.

> We do have a guideline that says to always use the "--no-commit" flag
> with "hg import" and then run the tests before committing, so that may
> answer your question about whether or not it's an official policy.
> (That said, I don't know if the devguide actually says that explicitly
> anywhere - it's just reflected in the various workflow examples, as
> well as in the mailing list discussions that helped craft those
> examples)

I agree with this, but I also want to make sure the author of the
patch always gets proper recognition (after all that's what motivates
people to contribute!). I think that their name should always be in
the description if it's not in the committer field. Use your best
judgment or qualifying terms for patches that are co-productions of
committer and original author.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)