From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Eric S. Raymond" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Use of "Action stamps" in commit messages Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2018 14:15:20 -0400 Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs Message-ID: <20180713181520.GD28072@thyrsus.com> References: <85f9a968-ba72-5b00-761e-a4449b073a7f@cs.ucla.edu> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1531507514 8793 195.159.176.226 (13 Jul 2018 18:45:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2018 18:45:14 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mutt/1.9.4 (2018-02-28) Cc: Emacs developers To: Paul Eggert Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Jul 13 20:45:10 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1fe33w-00024R-9d for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 13 Jul 2018 20:45:04 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:38762 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fe363-0003S2-8K for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 13 Jul 2018 14:47:15 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:36617) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fe2bE-000588-Lj for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 13 Jul 2018 14:15:25 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fe2bB-0006Uq-Bb for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 13 Jul 2018 14:15:24 -0400 Original-Received: from thyrsus.com ([71.162.243.5]:40622 helo=snark.thyrsus.com) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fe2bA-0006TQ-W3 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 13 Jul 2018 14:15:21 -0400 Original-Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id E9A8A3A4AA7; Fri, 13 Jul 2018 14:15:20 -0400 (EDT) Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <85f9a968-ba72-5b00-761e-a4449b073a7f@cs.ucla.edu> X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] [fuzzy] X-Received-From: 71.162.243.5 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Fri, 13 Jul 2018 14:45:48 -0400 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:227362 Archived-At: Paul Eggert : > Eric Raymond designed that format, partly to be robust in the presence > of VC backend changes. I'll send this message to him directly, to give > him a heads-up, as this has been a long thread that he's likely tuned > out of. > > On 07/13/2018 04:13 AM, Noam Postavsky wrote: > > .On 12 July 2018 at 11:34, Basil L. Contovounesios wrote: > > > >> from CONTRIBUTE: > >> > >> One way to identify revisions is by quoting their summary line. > >> Another is with an action stamp - an RFC3339 date followed by ! > >> followed by the committer's email - for example, > >> "2014-01-16T05:43:35Z!esr@thyrsus.com". > > This reminds that I'd like to remove this "Action stamp" thing as > > commit message convention. Action stamps are fine for what they were > > designed for: acting as a unique commit id for the repository > > conversion software "reposurgeon", but they are not very friendly to > > human readers. > > > > A date followed by the summary line is sufficient to identify a commit > > in a vc system agnostic way, reads nicer, and gives more info up front > > to a human. > > > > See also Bug#20609. > > > > https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=20609 If you're going to do this, please at least have mercy on future translators and use a strict RFC3339 date format the way action stamps do. I'm against this change because I think in the long term. Someday Emacs will change VCSes again. On the day, whoever is charged with the move is going to curse the perpetrators if he has to deal with a semi-infinite number of variant ways of pasting together the data and commit parts of your proposed IDs. I know of two efforts underway to make cgit and git itself aware of the action-stamp format. Have patience. Soon enough you'll be able to treat action stampts as hotlinks that your software will chase for you. -- Eric S. Raymond My work is funded by the Internet Civil Engineering Institute: https://icei.org Please visit their site and donate: the civilization you save might be your own.