Janne Jalkanen wrote:
I don't know anybody who goes to the trouble of reading the SVN logs,
Yes, you do. I completely and utterly rely on them instead of the
@author-tags to see what happened. The SVN logs say who approved the
code into the SVN, which means that that person is responsible for the
code. *Not* the patch submitter (which is what the @author should
say). Or are you implying that we should blindly accept code which we
don't understand and defer responsibility to random patch submitters?
No, of course not. To reiterate, I am implying exactly what I wrote: that
the original author of a class is the one identified in the @author tag,
with the understanding of what that means, i.e., that that does not (nor
would anyone believe) include everyone who has touched that file. It does
(as I wrote) state who initially wrote it, who knew the reason for it, and
who is most likely (if they are still around) to understand it. I
understand the value of the SVN logs, but if I want to ask somebody about
the AAA code, I can ask the list, but I can also target Andrew (on the
list) since I know he wrote it. If I note that the person identified in
the @author tag hasn't been seen for two years, then I would expect that
I'd be mostly on my own. It is in either case valuable information.
and
I think it's not realistic to think anybody who downloads and looks at
code is going to do so.
Yes, they will, if there are no @author-tags. And it's better to target
the mailing list anyway instead of particular people.
As above, I meant on the list.
Case in point: The author of LuceneSearchProvider has not contributed
anything in what, two years? Yet he still stands in as the @author.
Would you go to him to ask for help, or should you go to the mailing list?
I'd ask the list, but I would likewise *know* that the author hasn't
been seen for two years, information that would be lost if the tag had
been removed.
It's not that @author identifies every contributor,
it identifies someone who knows what the code does, why it was written,
and who is most likely to know how to fix or modify it. That is very
valuable information, even for Apache projects.
That is not true even for my own code.
You're saying you have your name on code you don't understand?
really, really a bad idea to throw out metadata, even if it's not
*entirely* accurate (and for @author tags, I'd argue that within
limitations, they're largerly accurate for their intended purpose).
Well, I am going to remove my authorship from the code anyway, since
they mostly bother me instead of giving me any concrete benefits.
Perhaps as lead on this project you have a different perspective. On
other projects I've been involved with the @author tag has been helpful.
Murray
...........................................................................
Murray Altheim <murray07 at altheim.com> === = =
http://www.altheim.com/murray/ = = ===
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