Re: Hot Standby 0.2.1

On Oct 9, 2009, at 1:21 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.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