RE: Feature request: provide a persistent IDs on a commit

["Jason Pyeron" <jpyeron@pdinc.us>]

> From: Stephen Finucane
> Sent: Friday, July 29, 2022 8:11 AM
> 
> On Tue, 2022-07-19 at 13:09 +0200, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 19 2022, Stephen Finucane wrote:
> >
> > > On Mon, 2022-07-18 at 20:50 +0200, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Jul 18 2022, Stephen Finucane wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > ...to track evolution of a patch through time.
> > > > >
> > > > > tl;dr: How hard would it be to retrofit an 'ChangeID' concept à la the 'Change-
> > > > > ID' trailer used by Gerrit into git core?
> > > > >
> > > > > Firstly, apologies in advance if this is the wrong forum to post a feature
> > > > > request. I help maintain the Patchwork project [1], which a web-based tool that
> > > > > provides a mechanism to track the state of patches submitted to a mailing list
> > > > > and make sure stuff doesn't slip through the crack. One of our long-term goals
> > > > > has been to track the evolution of an individual patch through multiple
> > > > > revisions. This is surprisingly hard goal because oftentimes there isn't a whole
> > > > > lot to work with. One can try to guess whether things are the same by inspecting
> > > > > the metadata of the commit (subject, author, commit message, and the diff
> > > > > itself) but each of these metadata items are subject to arbitrary changes and
> > > > > are therefore fallible.
> > > > >
> > > > > One of the mechanisms I've seen used to address this is the 'Change-ID' trailer
> > > > > used by Gerrit. For anyone that hasn't seen this, the Gerrit server provides a
> > > > > git commit hook that you can install locally. When installed, this appends a
> > > > > 'Change-ID' trailer to each and every commit message. In this way, the evolution
> > > > > of a patch (or a "change", in Gerrit parlance) can be tracked through time since
> > > > > the Change ID provides an authoritative answer to the question "is this still
> > > > > the same patch". Unfortunately, there are still some obvious downside to this
> > > > > approach. Not only does this additional trailer clutter your commit messages but
> > > > > it's also something the user must install themselves. While Gerrit can insist
> > > > > that this is installed before pushing a change, this isn't an option for any of
> > > > > the common forges nor is it something git-send-email supports.
> > > >
> > > > git format-patch+send-email will send your trailers along as-is, how
> > > > doesn't it support Change-Id. Does it need some support that any other
> > > > made-up trailer doesn't?
> > >
> > > It supports sending the trailers, sure. What it doesn't support is insisting you
> > > send this specific trailer (Change-Id). Only Gerrit can do this (server side,
> > > thankfully, which means you don't need to ask all contributors to install this
> > > hook if you want to rely on it for tooling, CI, etc.).
> >
> > Ah, it's still unclear to me what you're proposing here though. That
> > send-email always (generates?) or otherwise insists on the trailer, that
> > it can be configured ot add it?
> >
> > That send-email have some "pre-send-email" hook? Something else?
> 
> (Apologies for the delayed response: I was on holiday).
> 
> I'm afraid I don't have the correct terminology to describe what I'm suggesting
> so I'll show an example instead.
> 
> I have configured the 'fuller' pretty formatter locally:
> 
>    $ git config format.pretty
>    fuller
> 
> When I do git log on e.g. the openstack nova repo, I see:
> 
>    commit 2709e30956b53be1dca91eec801220f0efbaed93
>    Author:     Stephen Finucane <sfinucan@redhat.com>
>    AuthorDate: Thu Jul 14 15:43:40 2022 +0100
>    Commit:     Stephen Finucane <sfinucan@redhat.com>
>    CommitDate: Mon Jul 18 12:30:25 2022 +0100
> 
>        Fix compatibility with jsonschema 4.x
> 
>        This changed one of the error messages we depend on [1].
> 
>        [1] https://github.com/python-jsonschema/jsonschema/commit/641e9b8c
> 
>        Change-Id: I643ec568ee2eb2ec1a555f813fd2f1acff915afa
>        Signed-off-by: Stephen Finucane <sfinucan@redhat.com>
> 
> (Side note: What *is the term for the "Author", "AuthorDate", "Commit" and
> "CommitDate" fields? Commit header? Commit metadata? Something else?)
> 
> My thinking is there are two types of information here: information that relates
> to the "commiting" of this change and information that relates to the
> "authorship" of the this change. The commit ID, 'Commit' and 'CommitDate' fields
> clearly form the commit parts. I'm arguing that it would be good to have an
> equivalent to the commit ID field for the authorship-type metadata.
> 
>    commit 2709e30956b53be1dca91eec801220f0efbaed93
>    Author:     Stephen Finucane <sfinucan@redhat.com>
>    AuthorDate: Thu Jul 14 15:43:40 2022 +0100
>    AuthorID:   I643ec568ee2eb2ec1a555f813fd2f1acff915afa
>    Commit:     Stephen Finucane <sfinucan@redhat.com>
>    CommitDate: Mon Jul 18 12:30:25 2022 +0100
> 
>        Fix compatibility with jsonschema 4.x
> 
>        This changed one of the error messages we depend on [1].
> 
>        [1] https://github.com/python-jsonschema/jsonschema/commit/641e9b8c
> 
>        Signed-off-by: Stephen Finucane <sfinucan@redhat.com>
> 
> At risk of repeating myself, I think this information would be valuable to allow
> me to answer the question "is this the same[*] commit?". During code review,
> this would allow me to track the evolution of an individual patch. Once a patch
> is merged, it would allow me to track the backporting or cherry-picking of that

We have been toying with this. We are looking at a field (behaves like parent) to track "original commit".

This value would be set on first rebase, amend, cherry-pick, etc.

The bonus for us will be when we patch gerrit to consume it and git log --graph --somenewoption to use it.

It would be nice if git core did add such value.

-Jason