Re: Time to add a Git .mailmap?

On 2024-Nov-01, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

> > LGTM. I'd also add this line while at it:
> >
> > Peter Eisentraut <peter(at)eisentraut(dot)org> <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net>
> >
> > This takes care of all the duplicate "identities" in the history AFAICT.
>
> I'm not sure if this is a good use of the mailmap feature. If someone
> commits under <peter(at)companyfoo(dot)com> for a while and then later as
> <peter(at)companybar(dot)com>, and the mailmap maps everything to the most recent
> one, that seems kind of misleading or unfair?

While I would agree with this line of thinking if the situation were as
you describe, it should be obvious that it isn't; nobody here uses or
has ever used a work email as committer address[1][2]. Nevertheless,
since this argument is about _your_ personal identity not mine, I'm not
going to stand against you on it.

Therefore I +1 Daniel's original proposal with thanks, and BTW I'm not
sorry for changing my name to use the hard-won ' accent on it :-)

> The examples on the gitmailmap man page all indicate that this feature
> is to correct accidental variations or obvious mistakes, but not to
> unify everything to the extent that it alters the historical record.

I don't think these examples are normative. There's plenty of evidence
that people look for ways to attribute contributions to individuals
rather than email-based identities. See for example

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/14909
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/blob/main/.mailmap
https://github.com/gradle/gradle/blob/master/.mailmap

[1] AFAIK gmx.net is a ISP-supplied address, not a work address.
[2] scrappy(at)hub(dot)org and simon(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com might be
considered work addresses, but they aren't really

--
Álvaro Herrera PostgreSQL Developer — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"E pur si muove" (Galileo Galilei)