_posts/2023-04-15-give-credit-where-credit-s-due.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: Give credit where credit's due
+date: 2023-04-15 09:17 -0400
+---
+
+I love pair programming. It is a great way to improve solutions, share context,
+and continuously review code.  But the passenger in a pairing session often ends
+up being the unsung hero, not showing up in the commit history for their
+invaluable contributions because they were not typing on the keyboard.
+
+Commit logs are obviously not the authority on an individual's contributions to
+a codebase, but I still like to give credit where credit is due.  Fortunately,
+using git's [trailers][1], Github allows you to [commit together][2]. Including
+a `Co-authored-by:` citation with your pairing partner's name and email will 
+properly attribute them in Github's commit log.
+
+I have used this to share credit for several years, but it is a bit painful.
+Making sure to type your partner's name and email is a hassle. Any typo will
+not credit appropriately and become permanantly engraved in the history of your
+repository when you merge it to master!
+
+So avoid the typos!
+
+First, I created a simple git alias that will allow me to easily modify a commit
+to add a trailer.  In your global `.gitconfig` file, add
+
+```
+[alias]
+  add-trailer = commit --no-edit --amend --trailer
+```
+
+This can be used as part of a two step process:
+
+1. Make your commit as you normally would
+2. Use the alias to add a trailer
+  * `git add-trailer "Co-authored-by: Partner <a@example.com>"`
+
+We can still have typos though. But if our pairing partner has worked on this
+repository in the past, we can find their information in the git log.  This is
+still painful to do manually.  [Fzf][3] can help us here though. We can pass our
+log information into fzf and then pass our selection on to our newly created git
+alias:
+
+```
+git log --pretty="%an <%ae>" \
+    | sort -u \
+    | fzf \
+    | xargs -I "{}" git add-trailer "Co-authored-by: {}"
+```
+
+Breaking this down:
+* `git log --pretty="%an <%ae>"`
+  * List the author of every commit in our repositry and format it appropriately
+    for attribution
+* `sort -u`
+  * Make the list sorted and unique
+* `fzf`
+  * Prompt us to make a selection from the list
+* `xargs -I "{}" git add-trailer "Co-authored-by: {}"`
+  * Take the result from our prompt and pass it into our new git alias
+
+And when everything is in place, attribution is a breeze!
+
+![Example git acknowledge](/assets/gack-example.gif)
+
+And in the spirit of attribution, thanks to last week's pairing partner:
+
+Encouraged-by: nichol alexander &lt;nichol.alexander@gmail.com&gt;
+
+
+[1]: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-interpret-trailers
+[2]: https://github.blog/2018-01-29-commit-together-with-co-authors/
+[3]: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf