Re: RFD: fast-import is picky with author names (and maybe it should - but how much so?)

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 10:41 PM, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 07:48:14PM +0100, Felipe Contreras wrote:

quoted

quoted

  3. Exporters should not use it if they have any broken-down
     representation at all. Even knowing that the first half is a human
     name and the second half is something else would give it a better
     shot at cleaning than fast-import would get.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. If they have name and email, then
sure, it's easy.

But not as easy as just printing it. What if you have this:

  name="Peff <angle brackets> King"
  email="[off-list ref]"

Concatenating them does not produce a valid git author name. Sending the
concatenation through fast-import's cleanup function would lose
information (namely, the location of the boundary between name and
email).

Right. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any DSCM that does that.

Similarly, one might have other structured data (e.g., CVS username)
where the structure is a useful hint, but some conversion to name+email
is still necessary.

CVS might be the only one that has such structured data. I think in
subversion the username has no meaning. A 'felipec' subversion
username is as bad as a mercurial 'felipec' username.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras