affiliations columns in commits table seem unused

[MoralCode]

in my recent work looking at the commits table, i noticed that it contains some columns for affiliation
cmt_author_affiliation and cmt_committer_affiliation

The only reference I was able to find in the code to these columns were some unused or barely-used functions, some of which seemed intended to clear out these columns. Such as:

https://github.com/chaoss/augur/blob/75d99d35384983041d9362049e67a9ddc5c5d926/augur/tasks/git/util/facade_worker/facade_worker/rebuildcache.py#L36

a search in dbeaver for records where cmt_author_affiliation IS NOT NULL and cmt_author_affiliation != 'NULL' returned no results.

Can these columns be removed?

[Phanindra899]

Hi @MoralCode, I was going through this and wanted to clarify before jumping into changes.

I checked the commits table and saw the cmt_author_affiliation and cmt_committer_affiliation columns. From what I can tell, they don’t seem to be actively used, and even the data looks mostly empty.

I also noticed some references like the nuke_affiliations function, but it doesn’t look like these fields are part of any core flow right now.

Before I proceed, just wanted to confirm — is the intention here to fully remove these columns? Or should I first verify all usages across the codebase (API, tasks, etc.) and then decide?

If removal is the goal, my plan would be to:

• search for all references to make sure nothing depends on them
• add a proper migration instead of directly modifying the schema
• double-check that nothing breaks in data collection or APIs

Let me know if this sounds right or if you’d prefer a different approach.

[MoralCode]

I appreciate the enthusiasm with jumping on this issue!

I still need to check with other maintainers to make sure my assumptions about the state of these columns are correct and that we really do want to delete any data stored in them in the process of removing them.

I can ask about this in the CHAOSS Slack in the #wg-augur-8knot channel to see what others think.

[Phanindra899]

@MoralCode
Thanks for the clarification, that makes sense.

I agree this needs to be validated before making any schema changes, especially since it involves potential data removal.

I’ll wait for the decision from the discussion on Slack. In the meantime, I’ll explore other issues and continue contributing.

Happy to take this up once there’s a clear direction.