On 3/17/24 18:20, Ian Eure wrote:
MSavoritias <em...@msavoritias.me> writes:
On 3/17/24 11:39, Lars-Dominik Braun wrote:
Hey,
I have heard folks in the Guix maintenance sphere claim that we
never rewrite git history in Guix, as a matter of policy. I believe
we should revisit that policy (is it actually written anywhere?)
with an eye towards possible exceptions, and develop a mechanism for
securely maintaining continuity of Guix installations after history
has been rewritten so that we maintain this as a technical
possibility in the future, even if we should choose to use it
sparingly.
the fallout of rewriting Guix’ git history would be devastating. It
would break every single Guix installation, because
a) `guix pull` authenticates commits and we might lose our trust anchor
if we rewrite history earlier than the introduction of this feature,
b) `guix pull` outright rejects changes to the commit history to
prevent
downgrade attacks.
Additionally it would break every single existing usage of the
time machine and thereby completely defeat the goal of providing
reproducible software environments since the commit hash is used to
identify the point in time to jump to.
I doubt developing “mechanisms” – whatever they look like – would
be worth the effort. Our contributors matter, but so do our users.
Never
ever rewriting our git history is a tradeoff we should make for our
users.
Lars
Thats a good point. in the sense that its a tradeoff here and I
absolutely agree.
But let me add some food for thought here:
1. Were the social aspects considered when the system came into place?
2. Is it more important for the system to stay as is than to welcome
new contributors?
3. You mention "its a tradeoff we should make for our users". How many
trans people where involved in that decision and how much did their
opinion matter in this?
I am saying this because giving power to people(what is called users)
is not only handling them code or make sure everything is free
software.
Its also the hard part of making sure the voices of people that can
not code is heard and is participating and taking in mind.
Just want to say that I appreciate and agree with your thoughtful words.
I’d also note that name changes aren’t a concern limited to trans
people, and framing this as "we have to upend everything Because
Transgender" is both wrong and feels pretty bad to me. Anyone can
change their name at any time for any reason, or no reason at all, and
may wish to update historical references to their previous names.
Having a mechanism to support this is, in my view, a matter of basic
decency and respect for all humans.
Thanks,
— Ian
You are right. I failed to see how it could be desirable for other
people too.
I agree it should be done for everybody.
MSavoritias
