Re: [PATCH] send-email: add proper default sender

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Nov 13, 2012, 17:14 UTC
Message-ID: <20121113171445.GG20361@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <7vpq3hfpm7.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 08:13:04AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> >> That's right, AUTHOR_IDENT would fall back to the default email and full name.
> >
> > Yeah, I find that somewhat questionable in the current behavior, and I'd
> > consider it a bug. Typically we prefer the committer ident when given a
> > choice (e.g., for writing reflog entries).
> 
> Just to make sure I follow the discussion correctly, do you mean
> that the bug is that we pick a fuzzy AUTHOR when COMMITTER is
> specified more concretely and we usually use COMMIITTER for this
> kind of thing in the first place but send-email does not in this
> case (I do not see "git var GIT_AUTHOR_IDENT" returning value from
> the implicit logic as a bug in this case---just making sure).

Having discussed more, I think there are two questionable things:

  1. Preferring author over committer

  2. Failing to fall back to committer when author is implicit or bogus
     (because "git var" dies).

I think (1) may fall into the "this is not how I would do it today, but it is not worth a possible regression" category.

I think (2) might be worth fixing, though. Certainly when the author is bogus (by IDENT_STRICT rules), which I think was the original intent of the "$repoauthor || $repocommitter" code. Probably when the author ident is implicit, though that is more hazy to me.

> For a change with low benefit/cost ratio like this, the best course
> of action often is to stop paying attention to the thread that has
> become unproductive and venomous, and resurrect the topic after
> people forgot about it and doing it right yourself ;-).

I came to the same conclusion, but decided to simply do it right now while it was in my head. Hopefully we can progress by reviewing the series I just posted.

-Peff