If you are a software developer who likes IDEs, please help to shape a new feature that is currently worked on for KDevelop, your attractive cross-platform IDE for currently C, C++, Python, JavaScript and PHP:
support for management of multiple author identities (name, email, …)
Please help by telling your user stories around data about your author identity in your development process. Add the things you would like to see supported (soon or one day) here:
https://community.kde.org/KDevelop/AuthorIdentities#User_stories
Other contributions to that page are welcome, too. It is a wiki 🙂
(If a wiki scares you, replying in the comments to this blog post is also fine, everything will be picked up.)
To give you an idea what kind of things are wanted, read on:
Some initial user stories
Do not get in the way:
As developer working alone on a private project, I do not want to have to deal with any identity stuff, any defaults are fine with me.
Multiple identities in same system:
As developer working with the same computer/system on different projects for different customers or different project groups, I want KDevelop to always inject the correct/matching copyright & author information on generating code from file & app templates for different projects/customers, instead of having to manually post-edit the generated code.
Multiple identities in same project:
As developer working on the same project with the same computer system both for job and privately, I want to quickly switch identity data to be used depending on whether I work for job or privately, to mark copyright of contributions accordingly.
Pick up identity on import:
As developer importing a project into KDevelop, I want to have the identity automatically derived from account/server/fetched project and have the option to create a new identity from the found data if there is none, or overwrite with an existing identity.
Highlight my contributions in VCS history:
As developer working on a project with VCS support, I want my easily see my own commits in the vcs history, e.g. by being highlighted.
Update existing identity data:
As developer working on a project, I want to have assistance when identity properties had been changed (like email address or name) and this should be reflected in all existing copyright/contributor notions of a project, where possible.
Following some more background info why work has been started on this feature:
Problem
When it comes to copyright notions in code/files and authorship/committer id in version control systems, the name and the contact information, like email address, can be a few different ones for oneself. E.g. when working in different FLOSS projects, with each email address dedicated to the project, or when working on a FLOSS project both in name of an employer, but also privately in free times.
Currently KDevelop is hard-coded to use whatever is set for the default profile of KEMailSettings when generating new code from file templates, the only place right now using authorship metadata. KMail, the well-known email client, seems to be feeding KEMailSettings via the KIdentityManagement module, but otherwise there might be no data in there. So the developer has to manually complete the fields in the generated code.
The integration of KDevelop with git also ignores the author and commiter metadata used by git for the repo. They need to be set manually and are nowhere linked to what KDevelop knows.
For a truely integrated development experience this needs to be improved.
Solution
KDevelop could know about the concept of author identity, could allow to have multiple identities available to select from for a project, and could allow plugins to make use of identity details e.g. on doing VCS commits or generating code.
Here a screenshot of some proof-of-concept code:
So, what do you also think in general? Anything related which is worth looking
into for this? Other comments?
Attracted by virtual constructs 