Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Still more tweaking of git_changelog.

On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 12:08 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>> Still more tweaking of git_changelog.
>
>> Uhm, could you stop massively changing the behavior of this script
>> with no discussion at all?
>
> Uh, there was no discussion of the original behavior of the script
> either.

It was posted to the list weeks before it was committed and it was
discussed by multiple people at that time. We didn't debate every
detail of the behavior but there was certainly ample space for public
comment.

>> I happen to think that this is a
>> distinctly bad idea.  It defeats one of the major use cases of the
>> original script, which is being able to easily figure out which
>> branches a certain commit is in.
>
> Hm?  As far as I can tell, this fixes that not breaks it.  The problem
> I was seeing was that commits would be attributed to a branch when in
> fact they were made before the branch ever existed.

But the commits are still on any subsequently-created branches.
Frequently, I'm trying to figure out the first release that contains
some particular change. Say, tablespaces. So I go back and look
through the git log and find the commit. And here it is:
2467394ee1566e82d0314d12a0d1c0a5670a28c9.

Now I want to know which branches contain that commit. With the old
coding, I can just run this script, and it'll tell me all the branches
REL8_0_STABLE and higher have that commit. If the abbreviated SHA1
hashes are the same, I know that the commit was actually done before
the branch points for those releases. If they're different, I know
that the commit was back-patched into those branches. With your
changes, all I get is:

Author: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
Branch: master [2467394ee] 2004-06-18 06:14:31 +0000

...which is much less useful, at least given that I don't have the
dates of all the branch points memorized.

> I was under the impression that the purpose of the script was to replace
> cvs2cl and do approximately what cvs2cl did.  If you have another
> use-case then please explain what it is and why this change is bad
> for it.

See above.

Thanks,

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise Postgres Company