On Sat, Apr 4, 2026 at 10:13 PM Bruce Momjian <[email protected]> wrote: > Yes, that was the original purpose.
I didn't actually know that. That's likely my own fault. (OTOH I haven't actually used the new tag at all, at least not yet.) > Basically, if a commit has no > "Author" tag, the committer is assumed to be the author. If there is an > "Author" tag, the committer is not assumed to be the author. If there > is an Author tag and the committer wants author credit, they must add > their name as an author. If the committer wants to indicate they > changed the patch, and potentially added bugs, but doesn't want credit, > the wiki says to use Co-authored-by. Got it. That makes sense to me (obviously, since I already said that that's the only policy that could possibly be useful). > > What I'm saying here boils down to this: I don't think it's sensible > > to expect the use of a specific tag variant (or even the order in > > which author names appear) to convey much useful information. I really > > hope nobody reads too much into my choices in this area. > > Well, I don't care what we decide, but we should decide something. You > can say they don't convey information, but I need to put something in > the release notes, so they are forced to have some effect. I think that Co-authored-by should either: 1. have a specific mechanical purpose (like affecting how the release notes are written), OR 2. not exist at all. What's the point, otherwise? It just doesn't make sense to have a Co-authored-by that merely conveys a general vibe. These things are inherently squishy and subjective. Pretending otherwise would be a mistake (to be clear I'm not suggesting that you or anybody else has made that mistake). -- Peter Geoghegan
