Re: Hot Standby 0.2.1

On Oct 9, 2009, at 1:21 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:

> Simon Riggs wrote:
>> You have posted patches that I have said I don't agree with. My
>> name is
>> going to be on this when it goes in, so I don't think it makes any
>> sense
>> to force that commit to include changes I don't agree with. I cannot
>> prevent you making changes afterwards, nor would I wish to. I'd
>> like you
>> to respond sensibly to comments on those. We should work together
>> on a
>> consensus basis, especially since I know you have not fully tested
>> your
>> changes (either). Your error rate might be lower than mine, but it is
>> non-zero.
>
> The commit message and release notes mention might have just Simon's
> name, or multiple people.
>
> The hot patch commit is going to have multiple people involved
> before it
> is committed, so if Simon is worried that the patch will have ideas in
> it he does not agree with, perhaps we can make sure the commit and
> release note items include Heikki's name as well. Normally if a
> committer makes signficant changes to a patch, the committer's name is
> also added to the commmit message, and I suggest we do the same thing
> here with hot standby.

I think this is a weakness of our current style of heavy-weight
commits. I don't have a great suggestion for fixing it, though. Even
if we move to git, a major feature like this has such a complex
development history that I'm queasy about slurping it in unsquashed.
But at least for simple features I think that there would be a value
in separating the patch author's work from the committer's adjustments.

I realize (now) that this would complicate the release note generation
process somewhat, based on our current process, and there might be
other downsides as well. All the same, I think it has enough value to
make it worth thinking about whether there's some way to make it work.

...Robert