Re: RFC: stop doing "grand replace" updates to copyright years

[David Kastrup]

Werner LEMBERG <wl@gnu.org> writes:

>>> If accepting this proposal just means no more grand-replace, I'm
>>> fine with it, but it would seem a bit weird to keep "Copyright
>>> 1995-2023" at the top of all files even in 2025.
>> 
>> it is weird, but so is doing the grand update.
>
> Honestly, I don't see anything weird with doing `make grand-replace`.
> Commits affecting these parts of files almost never interfere with
> real changes, which means that neither `git bisect` nor `git blame`
> are essentially affected.  Admittedly, `git log` produces a lot of
> output, but it is possible to filter out relevant commits with
>
> ```
> git log -i --grep="grand.*replace" --invert-grep
> ```
>
> In total, we have exactly 45 such commits out of more than 32000
> commits done over the last 27 years.

An unresolvable merge conflict in a feature branch occurs when there has
been a copyright header update both in the feature branch and in the
master branch.

I am responsible for a number of commits over the years.  I remember
having to fix copyright header conflicts exactly zero times.

`git blame` tracks local changes.  If you are looking for the source of
some change, the grand replace has no impact on it.

I can understand this discussion about whitespace/formatting changes
(`git blame -w` helps and can be set as the default behavior).  For the
grand replace, it seems like a nothingburger to me.

-- 
David Kastrup