Re: Use of "Action stamps" in commit messages

[Radon Rosborough <radon.neon@gmail.com>]

>> Maybe I'm missing something, but -- if we change to a different VCS,
>> we are going to have to rewrite all the history anyway. Why would it
>> be difficult to have a filter that goes through and replaces all the
>> Git commit IDs with the corresponding ones for the new VCS?
>
> Because it is hard for an automatic tool to tell Git commit IDs from
> unrelated hexadecimal numbers.

The tool will know all the valid Git commit IDs, though. It could
translate unambiguous prefixes of more than 12 characters (or
something) automatically, and then prompt the user to resolve the
rest. It seems to me like translating the whole thing wouldn't be more
than an afternoon's work—are there really that many hexadecimal
numbers that happen to be prefixes of Git commit IDs in commit
messages?

IOW, although there are complications, this is something that would
only happen extremely rarely, and would only have to be done by one
person, and probably won't even happen at all. Whereas the alternative
solution requires all the developers to expend extra mental energy.