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

[Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwen@google.com>]

On Thu, Jul 21, 2022 at 12:10 AM Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 20, 2022 at 03:21:44PM -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> > The kernel community has repeatedly rejected per-patch Change-id trailers
> > because they carry no meaningful information outside of the gerrit system on
> > which they were created. Seeing a Change-Id trailer in a commit tells you
> > nothing about the history of that commit unless you know the gerrit system on
> > which this patch was reviewed (and have access to it, which is not a given).
>
> The "no meaningful information outside of the gerrit system" is the
> key.  This was extensively discussed in the
> ksummit-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org mailing list in late August
> 2019, subject line "Allowing something Change-Id (or something like
> it) in kernel commits".  Quoting from Linus Torvalds:
>
>     From: Linus Torvalds
>     Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2019 17:17:05 -0700
>     Message-Id: CAHk-=whFbgy4RXG11c_=S7O-248oWmwB_aZOcWzWMVh3w7=RCw@mail.gmail.com
>
>     No. That's not it at all. It's not "dislike gerrit".
>
>     It's "dislike pointless garbage".
>
>     If the gerrit database is public and searchable using the uuid, then
>     that would make the uuid useful to outsiders. And instead of just
>     putting a UUID (which is hard to look up unless you know where it came
>     from), make it be that "Link:" that gives not just the UUID, but also
>     gives you the metadata for that UUID to be looked up.
>..
>     So if you guys make the gerrit database actually public, and then
>     start adding "Link: ..." tags so that we can see what they point to, I
>     think people will be more than supportive of it.

Support for the "Link:" footer as a change ID has been implemented in
Gerrit as of https://gerrit.googlesource.com/gerrit/+/8cab93302d9c35316d691e848b67e687a68182b5
(available in Gerrit 3.3 and onwards).  I'm not sure if it has seen
much use, though.

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Han-Wen Nienhuys - Google Munich
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