The authorship of each patch in a series

[Greg KH]

On Thu, Sep 02, 2021 at 09:13:55AM +0200, Fabio M. De Francesco wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Another developer and I collaborated to design and write a series of four 
> patches. Of course, we will both use the "Co-developed-by" and "Signed-off-
> by" tags on each of the four works that make up the series.
> 
> However, there is a small problem that we would like to solve. Git-log only 
> displays a single name preceded by "Author:", so the reader of "git log --
> pretty = short" will only be shown one of our names.
> 
> We would like git-log to show one name after "Author:" in 1/4 and 4/4 and the 
> other name in 2/4 and 3/4. This arbitrary breakdown is based on the fact that 
> approximately 80% -90% of the lines of code from the first patch group were 
> actually written by one of the two co-developers and approximately 80% -90% 
> of the second patch group was written by the other.
> 
> I guess Git will label anyone who submits the whole series as "Author"; works 
> like this or am I wrong? If so, I guess if my friend sends patches 0/4, 1/4 
> and 4/4 then I should find a way to send 2/4 and 3/4 somehow that makes it 
> clear to the maintainer, the tool that uses to apply the series, and the 
> reviewers, which also 2/4 and 3/4 belong to the same series as 0/4, 1/4 and 
> 4/4.
> 
> How can we achieve this?

Commit the patches to your local tree with the correct authorship
information (some from you, some from them), and then when you create
the patch series, the correct names will show up in the email as who
authored them as the "From:" line.

Try it locally and see, this happens all the time in kernel development.

As an example, see all of the stable-kernel -rc release announcements
with the patches in them.  The original authorship is preserved just
fine.

thanks,

greg k-h