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git-shortlog.txt: improve documentation about .mailmap files
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The description on .mailmap made it seem like they are only useful for
commits with a wrong address for an author, but they are about fixing the
real name.  Explain this better in the text, and replace the existing
example with a new one that hopefully makes things clearer.

Signed-off-by: Adeodato Simó <dato@net.com.org.es>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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Adeodato Simó authored and Junio C Hamano committed Dec 27, 2008
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40 changes: 33 additions & 7 deletions Documentation/git-shortlog.txt
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -48,15 +48,41 @@ OPTIONS
FILES
-----

If the file `.mailmap` exists, it will be used for mapping author
email addresses to a real author name. One mapping per line, first
the author name followed by the email address enclosed by
'<' and '>'. Use hash '#' for comments. Example:
If a file `.mailmap` exists at the toplevel of the repository,
it is used to map an author email address to a canonical real name. This
can be used to coalesce together commits by the same person where their
name was spelled differently (whether with the same email address or
not).

Each line in the file consists, in this order, of the canonical real name
of an author, whitespace, and an email address (enclosed by '<' and '>')
to map to the name. Use hash '#' for comments, either on their own line,
or after the email address.

A canonical name may appear in more than one line, associated with
different email addresses, but it doesn't make sense for a given address
to appear more than once (if that happens, a later line overrides the
earlier ones).

So, for example, if your history contains commits by two authors, Jane
and Joe, whose names appear in the repository under several forms:

------------
Joe Developer <joe@example.com>
Joe R. Developer <joe@example.com>
Jane Doe <jane@example.com>
Jane Doe <jane@laptop.(none)>
Jane D. <jane@desktop.(none)>
------------

Then, supposing Joe wants his middle name initial used, and Jane prefers
her family name fully spelled out, a proper `.mailmap` file would look like:

------------
# Keep alphabetized
Adam Morrow <adam@localhost.localdomain>
Eve Jones <eve@laptop.(none)>
# Note how we don't need an entry for <jane@laptop.(none)>, because the
# real name of that author is correct already, and coalesced directly.
Jane Doe <jane@desktop.(none)>
Joe R. Developer <joe@random.com>
------------

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