Re: [PATCH v10 11/12] Documentation: add documentation for 'git interpret-trailers'

On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 10:21 AM, Michael Haggerty [off-list ref] wrote:

tl;dr: This patch series wants to introduce a permanent new Git data
format.  The current version can write trailers in formats that it is
incapable of reading, which I consider broken.  I advocate a stricter
specification of the format of trailers, at least until we get feedback
from users that they need more flexibility.

On 05/25/2014 10:37 AM, Christian Couder wrote:

[...]

quoted

My opinion is that many Git developers have been engaged and you can
see that in the Cc.

I cannot tell if they are all very happy or not but I suppose that if
they were very unhappy they would tell it.
[...]

It was unfair of me to try to characterize the opinions of other
developers.  On the other hand, even though many people have commented
on this proposal over its long lifetime, I didn't get the feeling that
it has won a consensus of +1s in its current form.

I'd love to hear the opinion of others because maybe I'm totally out in
left field.

FWIW, after a quick read, I find myself agreeing very much with
Michael's arguments for a stricter format (at least in its initial
version).

We are formalizing and applying tools/automation to a part of the
commit message that has so far been ad hoc and very informal. There is
no expectation that _every_ _single_ existing use of (informal)
trailers (except the somewhat-formalized support for --signoff) must
be supported by git-interpret-trailers.

However, there _is_ an expectation that git-interpret-trailers is
self-consistent and does not stumble over its own trailers. Therefore,
it makes perfect sense to make v1 very strict in what formats it
produce (i.e. a strict "key: value" format is enough for now).

And I want to reiterate that the reason I'm so emphatic about this
proposal is because I think it will be such a great new feature.  I just
think that some tweaks would make it a more solid foundation for
building even more functionality onto.

Fully agreed. git-interpret-trailers have come up in several other
discussion, both on the git mailing list and elsewhere, and I have no
doubt that this will be a very useful feature that will be put to good
use in many projects.


...Johan

-- 
Johan Herland, [off-list ref]
www.herland.net