[Docs] [Developer Policy] Document best practice of not tagging a username in commit messages and PR descriptions

[davidmrdavid]

Related to: https://discourse.llvm.org/t/forbidding-username-in-commits/86997

Context:

When we merge a commit including tag to another username (e.g. @<someUser>), that account will receive an email / notification every time that PR is cherry-picked and pushed to a fork, generating a lot of spam in the user's inbox. As of today, there's no way of disabling this on GitHub settings.

This PR documents this error in our developer policy, and reminds contributors to avoid it.

Next steps: I'm a big believer that any policy that is not enforced via automation is not enforced at all, so I'd love to see some kind of check to prevent this error. However, there does not seem to be an agreement to do that yet. I'll see if I can gather support for doing that.

[davidmrdavid]

Although I could merge this, I want to wait until I get an approval from a 'docs owner'. Not sure who that'd be though.

[boomanaiden154]

Although I could merge this

Having commit access does not let you land changes without review for the most part, although as a social policy, not a programmatically enforced one. From the developer policy:

You are granted commit-after-approval to all parts of LLVM. For information on how to get approval for a patch, please see LLVM Code-Review Policy and Practices. When approved, you may commit it yourself.

You are allowed to commit patches without approval which you think are obvious. This is clearly a subjective decision — we simply expect you to use good judgement. Examples include: fixing build breakage, reverting obviously broken patches, documentation/comment changes, any other minor changes. Avoid committing formatting- or whitespace-only changes outside of code you plan to make subsequent changes to. Also, try to separate formatting or whitespace changes from functional changes, either by correcting the format first (ideally) or afterward. Such changes should be highly localized and the commit message should clearly state that the commit is not intended to change functionality, usually by stating it is NFC.

Given you have commit access I'm assuming you've already read that, but just wanted to make sure since the wording you used here confused me a bit.

[davidmrdavid]

Thanks @boomanaiden154. Yes, agreed. I would not merge without a review; I was just trying to state that I was looking for a reviewer, and that I had commit access to merge once approved.

My apologies for the confusion!

[davidmrdavid]

@AaronBallman: I added you as a reviewer, as I noticed you in the commit history you made some relatively recent changes here, and GitHub suggested so as well. If there's a better owner (or a different etiquette to finding a reviewer in this part of the codebase), please let me know and feel free to unassign, thank you!

[kuhar]

I have almost all email notification disabled but still receive github notifications. Maybe s/an email/a notification/`?

[davidmrdavid]

good point, replaced here: 9a42646

thanks!

[jh7370]

For these sort of PRs, where there's clear consensus on the approach in the corresponding Discourse thread, I'd add those involved in the discussion. I don't believe these sort of docs have a particular owner.

[jh7370]

The "and" here seems misplaced?

[davidmrdavid]

ah, yes. That was a typo. It should read: "[...] the commit is cherry-picked and/or pushed to a fork".

Fixed here: f8cdebc

[nikic]

LGTM modulo the preceding wording nits.

[davidmrdavid]

I'd add those involved in the discussion

I will do so next time, thank you for the guidance.

@nikic - can I'd appreciate a final pass now that the feedback is incorporated, so I can merge. Thank you!

[davidmrdavid]

Thanks all Unfortunately buildkite is being flakey, and I don't have the permissions to retry those checks (as far as I can tell), so I'll have to push another commit ( a git pull ) to force the check to re-run.

[davidmrdavid]

SInce I made another push (although the diff has not changed). @kuhar can you help me with a final re-approval? I'll merge shortly after. Thank you.