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docs: Extend section on crediting work.

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Tim Abbott 2024-10-31 10:45:40 -07:00
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docs/contributing/continuing-unfinished-work.md
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@ -63,18 +63,58 @@ Otherwise, you can:
## Credit prior work in your commit history
When you use or build upon someone else's unmerged work, it is both professionally
and ethically necessary to [properly credit][coauthor-git-guide] their contributions
in the commit history of work that you submit.
When you use or build upon someone else's unmerged work, it is both
professionally and ethically necessary to [properly
credit][coauthor-git-guide] their contributions in the commit history
of work that you submit. Git, used properly, does a good job of
preserving commits originally authorship information.
The most direct way to credit someone else's work is with a `Co-authored-by:` line
after a blank line at the end of your commit message:
However, it's normal to find yourself making changes to commits
originally authored by others contributors, whether resolving merge
conflicts when doing `git rebase` or fixing bugs to create an
atomically correct commit compliant with Zulip's [commit
guidelines](../contributing/commit-discipline.md).
When you do that, it's your responsibility to ensure the resulting
commit series correctly credits the work of everyone who materially
contributed to it. The most direct way to credit the work of someone
beyond the commit's author maintained in the Git metadata is
`Co-authored-by:` line after a blank line at the end of your commit
message:
Co-authored-by: Greg Price <greg@zulip.com>
You may find it necessary to make use of tools such as `git commit --amend -C` or
`git commit --amend --reset-author` in instances where you squash commits in such a
way that preserves the wrong authorship information.
Be careful to type it precisely, because software parses these commit
message records in generating statistics. You should add such a line
in two scenarios:
- If your own work was squashed into a commit originally authored by
another contributor, add such a line crediting yourself.
- If you used another contributor's work in generating your own
commit, add such a line crediting the other contributor(s).
Sometimes, you make a mistake when rebasing and accidentally squash
commits in a way that messes up Git's authorship records. Often,
undoing the rebase change via `git reflog` is the best way to correct
such mistakes, but there are two other Git commands that can be used
to correct Git's primary authorship information after the fact:
- `git commit --amend --reset-author` will replace the Git commit
metadata (date, author, etc.) of the currently checked out commit
with yourself. This is useful to correct a commit that incorrectly
shows someone else as the author of your work.
- `git commit --amend -C <commit_id>` will replace the commit metadata
(date, author, etc.) on a commit with that of the provided commit
ID. This is useful if you accidentally made someone else's commit
show yourself as the author, or lost a useful commit message via
accidental squashing. (You can usually find the right commit ID to
use with `git reflog` or from GitHub).
As an aside, maintainers who modify commits before merging them are
credited via Git's "Committer" records (visible with `git show
--pretty=fuller`, for example). As a result, they may not bother with
adding a separate `Co-authored-by` record on commits that they revise
as part of merging a pull request.
## Present your pull request