
GitHub: Commit together with co-authors - brianmario
https://github.com/blog/2496-commit-together-with-co-authors
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jaytaylor
GitHub is attempting to standardize a commit message formatting convention for
this. Kind of has a certain odor to it.

Can we get cryptographically signed commit integrity into the mainstream
instead?

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enzanki_ars
There is already a convention for signed-off by. I don’t understand either why
GitHub is pushing for this, though I have seen this feature before on some
repositories before the post.

Edit: Now that I think about it, can see why. I have seen merges where is was
good enough to merge, but needed som slight adjustments. Rebase/merge with
minor changes would be a good use for this, and would allow for better
crediting of both authors.

~~~
jwilk
It's not clear to me what the semantics of Signed-off-by is supposed to be,
but at least for some projects (e.g. the Linux kernel), it doesn't imply that
you are a co-author.

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WorldMaker
That's what I've seen. Some projects, including the Linux kernel, use Signed-
off-by for Developer Certificate of Origin legal processes.

[https://elinux.org/Developer_Certificate_Of_Origin](https://elinux.org/Developer_Certificate_Of_Origin)

It makes sense that GitHub would use something new to avoid stepping on toes,
and GitHub's mirrors Signed-off-by in implementation as a git commit message
trailer.

~~~
brianmario
The Co-authored-by trailer isn't actually new. In fact it was already being
used by over ~1M commits on GitHub before we launched the feature! :)

The git-core commit message conventions docs mention it
([https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/CommitMessageConventio...](https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/CommitMessageConventions))
as do the OpenStack commit message convention docs
([https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GitCommitMessages#Including_...](https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GitCommitMessages#Including_external_references)).

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code_potato
I love this! As somebody who quite frequently performs pair programming, this
is a great feature. I’ve always found it unfair when only one of the two
people got to “keep their streak up”, I mean, it’s a group effort after all!

~~~
Hedja
We use "Name & Name <team@company.com>" during pairs/mobs so we don't worry
about who gets the credit and waste time rotating authors. It doesn't look
great on GitHub but we usually use an IDE to go through commit history anyway.

It doesn't work great for our open source projects though where visibility on
GitHub tends to be more important.

