On Tue, May 06, 2025 at 11:55:20PM -0400, Eric Sunshine wrote: > On Tue, May 6, 2025 at 9:32 PM Todd Zullinger <tmz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Eric Sunshine wrote: > > > Although we periodically hear that someone uses it, git-contacts > > > probably falls into the "tool has a clear alternative" category. In > > > this case, git-related[*] is a separately-maintained more functional > > > drop-in replacement which people could be using instead of > > > git-contacts. > > > > > > [*]: https://github.com/felipec/git-related/blob/master/git-related > > > > It may be worth noting that git-contacts is suggested in > > both MyFirstContribution.adoc and SubmittingPatches. > > I think I knew but forgot about those mentions. Certainly useful > information if Patrick decides to pursue retirement of git-contacts. I thought about moving git-contacts out of "contrib/" into "tools/" exactly because of that. Tooling related to working with Git itself shouldn't live in "contrib/" in the first place, but really should have its own home in the Git project. > > It probably helps that since 824503ce88 (SubmittingPatches: > > clarify 'git-contacts' location, 2024-04-18) there has been > > a note stating this isn't "part of the core `git` binary and > > must be called directly." That is relatively recent, though. > > Out of curiosity, I Googled git-contacts but didn't find any > meaningful hits. Pretty much the only pages found were renderings of > Git's documentation (including SubmittingPatches and the man page for > git-contacts itself), as well as the few patches to the Git mailing > list which introduced or touched git-contacts over the years. I did > not find any general discussion or recommendations to use > git-contacts, so perhaps it indeed is not very much used. > > > I added git-contacts to the Fedora git packaging shortly > > after 92a5dbbc22 (SubmittingPatches: mention the git > > contacts command, 2018-04-11), presuming some readers would > > want to use it. (I never want to penalize users who are > > diligent enough to read SubmittingPatches. :) > > > > All that said, I don't have any strong opinion on whether it > > is kept or removed, let alone when that might happen. I > > don't know that I've ever used it, other than for testing > > that it worked while packaging it. > > I've never used git-contacts either, despite the fact that I'm the one > who ported Felipe's git-related from Ruby[1] to Perl[2] for inclusion > in Git's "contrib" since the Ruby version had been rejected due to > being written in a language not already employed elsewhere in the > project. The Perl rewrite also included a number of useful > enhancements which Felipe later incorporated into git-related after he > published it as a standalone project. He has since extended it to > include even more features, so it's functionally a superset of > git-contacts. > > By the way, Felipe also sent a patch series[3] eleven years ago with > the same intention of Patrick's series under discussion. Felipe's > series was never picked up but did undertake the retirement of > git-contacts. Thanks for the pointers. Patrick
