Getting email addresses obfuscated in patch attachments created by "git format-patch"

Getting email addresses obfuscated in patch attachments created by "git format-patch"

[Jens Schmidt]

Emacs contribution policy recommends to attach patches created by "git 
format-patch".  It seems that the email address contained in such 
patches is *not* automatically stripped by mailman or whatever presents 
the mailing list archives of emacs-devel or bug-gnu-emacs.

Fiddling with "--from" to "git format-patch" does not seem to help, either.

OTOH, I have seen some patches like Paul's in this message:

   https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-01/msg01807.html

where his email address is "obfuscated" to

   Paul Eggert <address@hidden>

What causes this obfuscation?  How to configure that?  Manual 
post-processing of the patch with sed?

If it matters, I'd prefer to use Thunderbird to contribute patches ...

Thanks

Jens

Re: Getting email addresses obfuscated in patch attachments created by "git format-patch"

[Philip Kaludercic]

Jens Schmidt <jschmidt4gnu@vodafonemail.de> writes:

> Emacs contribution policy recommends to attach patches created by "git
> format-patch".  It seems that the email address contained in such
> patches is *not* automatically stripped by mailman or whatever
> presents the mailing list archives of emacs-devel or bug-gnu-emacs.
>
> Fiddling with "--from" to "git format-patch" does not seem to help, either.
>
> OTOH, I have seen some patches like Paul's in this message:
>
>   https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-01/msg01807.html
>
> where his email address is "obfuscated" to
>
>   Paul Eggert <address@hidden>
>
> What causes this obfuscation?  How to configure that?  Manual
> post-processing of the patch with sed?

This problem doesn't appear with recent patches, perhaps something was
misconfigured in 2016?

> If it matters, I'd prefer to use Thunderbird to contribute patches ...

I think that should still be possible.  I use Gnus or `vc-prepare-patch'
and frequently just attach patches without any issues.

> Thanks
>
> Jens

Re: Getting email addresses obfuscated in patch attachments created by "git format-patch"

[Jens Schmidt]

On 2023-05-16  08:46, Philip Kaludercic wrote:

 >> What causes this obfuscation?  How to configure that?  Manual
 >> post-processing of the patch with sed?
 >
 > This problem doesn't appear with recent patches, perhaps something was
 > misconfigured in 2016?

Um, I was probably not entirely clear here, or I misunderstand your 
reply - I *want* my email address to be obfuscated/hidden not only in 
the mail headers (which Mailman cares about) but also in attached 
patches (what Mailman does not seem to care about).

Thanks

Jens

Re: Getting email addresses obfuscated in patch attachments created by "git format-patch"

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 16 May 2023 20:31:57 +0200
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Jens Schmidt <jschmidt4gnu@vodafonemail.de>
> 
> Um, I was probably not entirely clear here, or I misunderstand your 
> reply - I *want* my email address to be obfuscated/hidden not only in 
> the mail headers (which Mailman cares about) but also in attached 
> patches (what Mailman does not seem to care about).

I'm not sure you can conceal your email address in practice if you
contribute changes to Emacs (or to any other projects with a public
repository).  That's because anyone could see your email address by
just walking the commit logs.  And many projects, Emacs included, have
a special mailing list where each commit is automatically posted, with
all its information, so anyone accessing the archives of such a list
will also see the email addresses of the contributors, and crawlers
can pick them up.

Thus, I'm not sure why you should insist on obfuscating the email
address in just those patches, since it will be visible in other
places anyway.

Re: Getting email addresses obfuscated in patch attachments created by "git format-patch"

[Jens Schmidt]

On 2023-05-16  20:57, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> I'm not sure you can conceal your email address in practice if you
> contribute changes to Emacs (or to any other projects with a public
> repository).  That's because anyone could see your email address by
> just walking the commit logs.  And many projects, Emacs included, have
> a special mailing list where each commit is automatically posted, with
> all its information, so anyone accessing the archives of such a list
> will also see the email addresses of the contributors, and crawlers
> can pick them up.
> 
> Thus, I'm not sure why you should insist on obfuscating the email
> address in just those patches, since it will be visible in other
> places anyway.

Ah.  So even if I supply a patch to Emacs by email, and someone else 
merges it, I will occur as commit author in git?  Fine with me, and then 
there is really no point in concealing the email address in the patch.

Re: Getting email addresses obfuscated in patch attachments created by "git format-patch"

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 16 May 2023 22:17:06 +0200
> Cc: philipk@posteo.net, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Jens Schmidt <jschmidt4gnu@vodafonemail.de>
> 
> On 2023-05-16  20:57, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > I'm not sure you can conceal your email address in practice if you
> > contribute changes to Emacs (or to any other projects with a public
> > repository).  That's because anyone could see your email address by
> > just walking the commit logs.  And many projects, Emacs included, have
> > a special mailing list where each commit is automatically posted, with
> > all its information, so anyone accessing the archives of such a list
> > will also see the email addresses of the contributors, and crawlers
> > can pick them up.
> > 
> > Thus, I'm not sure why you should insist on obfuscating the email
> > address in just those patches, since it will be visible in other
> > places anyway.
> 
> Ah.  So even if I supply a patch to Emacs by email, and someone else 
> merges it, I will occur as commit author in git?

Yes.  We take correct attribution seriously, so you should always be
the Author of the commits that install changes written by you.