Christian Couder <christian.couder@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > I am just wondering if you have read and taken into account the > previous threads on this mailing list about the same subject, like for > example this one: > > https://public-inbox.org/git/CAOvwQ4i_HL7XGnxZrVu3oSnsbnTyxbg8Vh6vzi4c1isSrrexYQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ Thanks for a starting-point link. In that discussion, another discussion in the debian BTS is mentioned, https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=451880 which in turn has links to other, even earlier, discussions, but they are all gmane links so it would be harder for those who do not use its NNTP interface (which still works). Here are their modern counterparts ;-) https://public-inbox.org/git/?q=gmane:83880 https://public-inbox.org/git/?q=gmane:146223 https://public-inbox.org/git/?q=gmane:146886 The older discussions already cited the cost to update both in-tree and out-of-tree tools not to barf when they see such a commit object and one of the reason why we would not want to do this, and Ted Ts'o gave us another excellent reason why not to do multiple author header lines in a commit object header, i.e. "How often is that all of the authors are completely equal?" Another thing that I didn't see brought up was that it is not enough to ensure all existing tools are updated not to barf on a commit with multiple "author" line. You need to define what it means to have multiple authors and how they are treated by tools in a consistent way. Think "shortlog", for example. The tool may be able to be tweaked not to barf, and you may be able to add a random definition of which of the multiple authors to group a single commit under (the "random definition" could be "show that same commit multiple times, once for each author" or it could be "concatenate the authors to create a single header to list co-authored commits under, as if they were a single person", or it could be something equally bogus), but I do not think any single solution satisfies people's needs, and my gut feeling is that it is not worth to add tons of options and explain them to the end-users to support these random things that happen when there are multiple authors. Incidentally, there recently was a discussion on extending request-pull by adding a summary of commits by reviewers and testers. https://public-inbox.org/git/20170115183051.3565-1-wsa@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/ I would imagine, if it is to be implemented, it would boil down to teaching shortlog that the "author" line in the commit object header is not the only thing that matters, and that it should optionally take notice of lines in the trailer block of the log message (e.g. perhaps "Co-Authored-by: " trailer suggested by $gmane/146223 above would help there). My advice to those who want to record credit to multiple authors is to treat the commit author line as recording the primary contact when there is a question on the commit and nothing else. Anything with richer semantics is better done in the trailer by enriching the support of trailer lines with interpret-trailers framework.