take the authormap trick from pip for release notes

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

as per https://github.com/pypa/pip/blob/master/tasks/generate.py#L12
git can use a authormap to generate release notes,
we should use something similar to fix up our own mapping

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

@nicoddemus i believe #2397 solves this one, correct?

[nicoddemus]

#2397 was about generating release notes, but that pip task you refer to actually is about generating an AUTHORS file automatically.

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

i see, thanks

[recursivelycurious]

@RonnyPfannschmidt is this still an open issue? Looking for a good first time contribution.

[nicoddemus]

@RonnyPfannschmidt you still think this would be useful? TBH I'm not sure it is worth doing...

@recursivelycurious great that you are looking for first contributions. We sometimes mark issues with the easy label which are good candidates for a first contribution. 👍

[nicoddemus]

@RonnyPfannschmidt still think this is worth doing? Here are a few reasons why I think this is not worth it:

1. Currently we don't have any overhead; people submitting PRs just add their names and there's very small chance of conflicts (contrary to the CHANGELOG which would cause conflicts all the time);
2. One needs a separate map of "git commit authors" to real user names (see pip's mailmap file). It is common for users to have slightly different names in different computers or even wanting a different name in the AUTHORS file than the one they use for commits; and we will probably only remember that at the time of release, so we will have to go "hunting" for the name of authors with problematic commits at that time. For example, there might be commits made by me authored as "Bruno Oliveira", "Bruno S. Oliveira", "bruno", and so on, and we need to map all of those to "Bruno Oliveira".
3. The history already contains commits with incorrect authors, we need to go back and map these.

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

valid concerns, i'll agree - thanks for bringing the details up