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Action stamps (was: Re: Moving to git)
- From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr at thyrsus dot com>
- To: Andi Kleen <andi at firstfloor dot org>
- Cc: Jason Merrill <jason at redhat dot com>, Richard Earnshaw <Richard dot Earnshaw at foss dot arm dot com>, Jakub Jelinek <jakub at redhat dot com>, Jeff Law <law at redhat dot com>, "gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org" <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2015 13:11:33 -0400
- Subject: Action stamps (was: Re: Moving to git)
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <55D61512 dot 8010002 at redhat dot com> <55D61B23 dot 3000309 at redhat dot com> <55D63403 dot 4000603 at redhat dot com> <20150824081741 dot GB9425 at tucnak dot redhat dot com> <55DB3991 dot 4030701 at redhat dot com> <20150824154355 dot GM9425 at tucnak dot redhat dot com> <55DB3E2A dot 1030703 at foss dot arm dot com> <55DD36CE dot 9050707 at redhat dot com> <871teqf1j6 dot fsf at tassilo dot jf dot intel dot com>
- Reply-to: esr at thyrsus dot com
Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>:
> But I don't really understand the problem. Just run git log
> and generate your own list of numbers. Should be straight forward
> to script.
I can tell you from experience with lots of conversions that this, and
the other proposals in the thread, are what our British friends call
"too clever by half". One defect is that they assume SHA hashes
of commits will be valid forever. But this assumnption could easily break
if either (a) the repository requires surgery in he future, or (b) GCC ever
changes version-control systems again.
What I usually do with old commit references in comments is map them
to what I call an "action stamp" - a user ID followed by an RFC3339
date. While this is theoretically not quite adequate, in practice
collisions are rare to nonexistent.
Action stamps have the major advantages that they are self-describing and
should remain valid and scrutable in the future under any reasonable
transformation of the repository.
Jason should make the policy decision, but this is what I recommend.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>