[Python-Dev] patch metadata - to use or not to use? (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Sat Nov 19 17:36:30 CET 2011

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 <stefanml 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)

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