Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: Future of monotone

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Mon, Jan 28, 2008 at 08:51:03PM -0700, Derek Scherger wrote:
> Thomas Keller wrote:
> >
> >Does it really make sense to have an author field for anything beside a 
> >commit cert? If you tag or test something, you do not become the author 
> >of anything, you just mark something somehow. When I look at the 
> >proposed database table schemes so far I somehow have the impression 
> >that we rather have a hard time of applying the same metadata which fit 
> >perfectly for non-commit certs on commit certificates - i.e. tag, 
> >branch, suspend and testresult perfectly fit into the 
> >(name,value,comment?,date,signer,signature) tuple scheme, just commit 
> >certs do not because they can optionally have an author which is 
> >different from the signer.
> 
> One reason for separating out the author from the signer is that, in the 
> event of a database rebuild, all certs will be re-signed by whoever does 
> the rebuild and the original author is lost. This has happened a few 
> times in the monotone history and while not a huge problem does leave 
> rebuild a little more lossy than it could be.

My current feeling is that separating out signer from author is a bad
idea.  The cost of having them is paid all the time -- you have two
different identities to worry about every time you print a log
message, there are security concerns (people who are confused about
identity can cause a mess), etc.  The cost of not having them is this
annoyance with database rebuilds, which are *very* rare, and for them
ad hoc techniques suffice.  (For instance: just munge a note about the
original author into the commit message programmatically.)

-- Nathaniel

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