Re: [PATCH 0/6][Outreachy] commit: Implementation of "amend!" commit

[Charvi Mendiratta <charvi077@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 24 Feb 2021 at 01:25, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
[...]
> We used to have only --fixup that was meant to squeeze in minor
> corrections to the contents recorded, and it kept the log message
> of the original commit intact.
>
> Now we have two other ways, --fixup=reword that is meant to correct
> only the log message while keeping the contents intact from the
> original, and --fixup=amend that is meant to allow users to do both.
> They are nice additions to our toolbox.
>
> While trying to use the --fixup=amend myself to "touch up" somebody
> else's work today, another thing that we did not discuss so far came
> to my mind (sorry, if this was discussed and resolved in your
> previous discussions with other reviewers).  What should we do to
> the authorship?
>

Yes, for the authorship similar to `--fixup`, when used with suboptions
`amend` or `reword`, it keeps the original authorship.

> For the original --fixup, it is reasonably obvious that the original
> authorship should be kept, as the intended use case is to make a
> small tweak that does not change the intention of the commit in any
> way (and that is why the log message from the original is kept), and
> with --fixup=reword, it would probably be the same (the contents
> were written by the original author alone, and the person fixing-up
> is not changing only the log message).  So these two have a
> reasonably good default model for the authorship information for the
> final outcome: the original authorship should be kept (of course,
> the user can easily take over the authorship later with "git commit
> --amend --reset-author" perhaps run as part of "rebase -i", if the
> contribution is significant enough to deserve the transfer of the
> authorship).
>
> But I am not sure what the default behaviour for the authorship when
> --fixup=amend:<commit> is used to update somebody else's commit.  I
> think it is OK to leave it to whatever the code happens to do right
> now (simply because I have no strong reason to vote for either way
> between keeping the original and letting the amending user take it
> over), but I think it should be documented what happens in each
> case.
>

Okay, I agree. We have included in the tests where we check both the
resulting commit message and the author details  but yes I will document
it as well.

Thanks and Regards,
Charvi