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While Robert certainly does a huge amount of work, this is a bit incorrect perception of how contributing to PostgreSQL works. There are ~20 developers responsi

While Robert certainly does a huge amount of work, this is a bit incorrect perception of how contributing to PostgreSQL works. There are ~20 developers responsible for final reviews and committing changes coming from other contributors, and Robert is one of them. That's of course a lot of work and requires a lot of experience, but it may skew the perception a bit. I often hear "there are only 20 people working on PostgreSQL" because the people don't realize that the guy who committed it may not be the one who implemented it. For example while Robert did a lot of work on the parallel stuff, large parts it were written by Amit Kapila, but he's not a committer so Robert is the one whose name is on the git commit. The actual authors/reviewers and so on are tracked in the commit message, but people often miss that. I sometimes hear "But there are only 20 people working on PostgreSQL!" because people don't realize that (and tools like ohloh/openhub/... make this mistake too).

cookiecaper 11y ago
The actual author can be correctly attributed in git by using the --author flag at commit time. For example, git commit --author "My Friend <friend@example.com>". The resulting git commit will show the committer as committer and the author as author, correctly providing attribution in changelogs. :)
- anarazel 11y ago
  That doesn't really work well, because frequently for more complex patches there's more than one significant author. So we end up crediting them in the text of the commit message instead. We're slowly converging of using a bit more standardized descriptions of who authored a commit, but so far it's not easily machine parsable :(
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    I think the idea is that you use a topic branch and each incremental piece is authored by the individual that authored it. Then the branch is merged in when the feature is done. If someone helps substantially at the atomic commit level, then they get greetz in the commit message; the person with 50%+ responsibility should get the author flag. If commits are in small enough units, that should be pretty doable and all code remains properly attributed. I do sympathize that not enough attention has been given to this, though, and there are probably people who don't want to follow the branching model. Would be nice if you could identify multiple authors in git. Here's a bug discussing that: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=451880 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=451880
    - anarazel 11y ago
      That model leaves you with an incredibly unusable history. So I think the chances of going there are zero.
      - pgaddict 11y ago
        It also doesn't work because a patch if sometimes reworked by multiple people - either the committer himself, or a co-author of the patch series.

cookiecaper 11y ago

The actual author can be correctly attributed in git by using the --author flag at commit time. For example, git commit --author "My Friend <friend@example.com>". The resulting git commit will show the committer as committer and the author as author, correctly providing attribution in changelogs. :)

anarazel 11y ago
That doesn't really work well, because frequently for more complex patches there's more than one significant author. So we end up crediting them in the text of the commit message instead. We're slowly converging of using a bit more standardized descriptions of who authored a commit, but so far it's not easily machine parsable :(
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  I think the idea is that you use a topic branch and each incremental piece is authored by the individual that authored it. Then the branch is merged in when the feature is done. If someone helps substantially at the atomic commit level, then they get greetz in the commit message; the person with 50%+ responsibility should get the author flag. If commits are in small enough units, that should be pretty doable and all code remains properly attributed. I do sympathize that not enough attention has been given to this, though, and there are probably people who don't want to follow the branching model. Would be nice if you could identify multiple authors in git. Here's a bug discussing that: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=451880 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=451880
  - anarazel 11y ago
    That model leaves you with an incredibly unusable history. So I think the chances of going there are zero.
    - pgaddict 11y ago
      It also doesn't work because a patch if sometimes reworked by multiple people - either the committer himself, or a co-author of the patch series.