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Subject: Re: PG 19 release notes and authors
From: Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>
In-Reply-To: <adO73c_EJKi05smk@momjian.us>
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2026 16:03:27 +0200
Cc: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>,
 =?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro_Herrera?= <alvherre@kurilemu.de>,
 Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>,
 Andrey Borodin <x4mmm@yandex-team.ru>,
 PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
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To: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
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> On 6 Apr 2026, at 15:57, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:

> Wow, I never thought that was a valid pattern, but I see a few PG 19
> commit messages using that, e.g.:
>=20
> Author: Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>
> 2025-08-12 [5f19d13df] libpq: Set LDAP protocol version 3
>=20
>     libpq: Set LDAP protocol version 3
>=20
>     Some LDAP servers reject the default version 2 protocol.  So set
>     version 3 before starting the connection.  This matches how the
>     backend LDAP code has worked all along.
>=20
>     Co-authored-by: Andrew Jackson <andrewjackson947@gmail.com>
>     Reviewed-by: Pavel Seleznev <pavel.seleznev@gmail.com>
>     Discussion: =
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAKK5BkHixcivSCA9pfd_eUp7wkLRhv=
Q6OtGLAYrWC%3Dk7E76LDQ%40mail.gmail.com
>=20
> Is that what people are using?  A missing Author, and co-authors means
> the committer is the author?  Right?  Shouldn't we document this?  =
That
> does give a unique use for Co-authored-by.

My online checksums commit use a similar pattern, which is how I had
interpreted our use of it.  It lists myself and Magnus as authors with =
Tomas
Vondra as co-auhor since he provided substantial changes to the patch.

A missing Author tag should IMO always mean that the committer is the =
author.

>> do think we have enough structured data that if we felt our =
attribution efforts
>> were insufficient there are more things we could do.  I=E2=80=99m not =
sure this is the
>> most valuable way to expose this data but it=E2=80=99s a way, we =
likely don=E2=80=99t do enough
>> promotion even with it, and it seems low maintenance.  But maybe =
there is a
>> cost/benefit discussion to be had here.
>=20
> I guess that is my question.  I don't think the author names have the
> same practical value now that we have commit links, but if people =
think
> it still has _sufficient_ value, we should keep it --- that was my
> question.

I know from talking to several contributors that seeing their name next =
to the
feature in the release notes is a huge motivator.

--
Daniel Gustafsson