87 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
87 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
Any wiki with a form of web-editing enabled will have to deal with
|
|
spam. (See the [[plugins/blogspam]] plugin for one defensive tool you
|
|
can deploy).
|
|
|
|
If:
|
|
|
|
* you are using ikiwiki to manage the website for a [[examples/softwaresite]]
|
|
* you allow web-based commits, to let people correct documentation, or report
|
|
bugs, etc.
|
|
* the documentation is stored in the same revision control repository as your
|
|
software
|
|
|
|
It is undesirable to have your software's VCS history tainted by spam and spam
|
|
clean-up commits. Here is one approach you can use to prevent this. This
|
|
example is for the [[git]] version control system, but the principles should
|
|
apply to others.
|
|
|
|
## Isolate web commits to a specific branch
|
|
|
|
Create a separate branch to contain web-originated edits (named `doc` in this
|
|
example):
|
|
|
|
$ git checkout -b doc
|
|
|
|
Adjust your setup file accordingly:
|
|
|
|
gitmaster_branch => 'doc',
|
|
|
|
## merging good web commits into the master branch
|
|
|
|
You will want to periodically merge legitimate web-based commits back into
|
|
your master branch. Ensure that there is no spam in the documentation
|
|
branch. If there is, see 'erase spam from the commit history', below, first.
|
|
|
|
Once you are confident it's clean:
|
|
|
|
# ensure you are on the doc branch
|
|
$ git branch
|
|
doc
|
|
* master
|
|
$ git merge --ff doc
|
|
|
|
## removing spam
|
|
|
|
### short term
|
|
|
|
In the short term, just revert the spammy commit.
|
|
|
|
If the spammy commit was the top-most:
|
|
|
|
$ git revert HEAD
|
|
|
|
This will clean the spam out of the files, but it will leave both the spam
|
|
commit and the revert commit in the history.
|
|
|
|
### erase spam from the commit history
|
|
|
|
Git allows you to rewrite your commit history. We will take advantage of this
|
|
to eradicate spam from the history of the doc branch.
|
|
|
|
This is a useful tool, but it is considered bad practise to rewrite the
|
|
history of public repositories. If your software's repository is public, you
|
|
should make it clear that the history of the `doc` branch in your repository
|
|
is unstable.
|
|
|
|
Once you have been spammed, use `git rebase` to remove the spam commits from
|
|
the history. Assuming that your `doc` branch was split off from a branch
|
|
called `master`:
|
|
|
|
# ensure you are on the doc branch
|
|
$ git branch
|
|
* doc
|
|
master
|
|
$ git rebase --interactive master
|
|
|
|
In your editor session, you will see a series of lines for each commit made to
|
|
the `doc` branch since it was branched from `master` (or since the last merge
|
|
back into `master`). Delete the lines corresponding to spammy commits, then
|
|
save and exit your editor.
|
|
|
|
Caveat: if there are no commits you want to keep (i.e. all the commits since
|
|
the last merge into master are either spam or spam reverts) then `git rebase`
|
|
will abort. Therefore, this approach only works if you have at least one
|
|
non-spam commit to the documentation since the last merge into `master`. For
|
|
this reason, it's best to tackle spam with reverts until you have at least one
|
|
commit you want merged back into the main history.
|