Re: Please fix the useless email prompts

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Aug 20, 2017, 09:18 UTC
Message-ID: <20170820091807.l23h44gnjajfv5bn@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAH8yC8mpPRN2y1k07_Jk9QP88=gpLKNWfV3W0QQwXTWxyL5STQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Aug 19, 2017 at 02:02:09PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> > Hasn't this been asked and answered already?
> >
> >     https://public-inbox.org/git/CACBZZX4vEOD-4a-eK-uBxmFrb1GLSvJKxHW51whCSbCZdh7amQ@mail.gmail.com/
> 
> Its 2017. I'd like the tools to work for me instead of me working for the tools.

Ironically, Git used to behave as you requested in 2005. After being bombarded with complaints about how Git was too lax in creating commits with bogus ident information, we changed it in 2012. So I don't think "it's 2017" carries any weight as an argument.

There are numerous discussions in the archive on this. But my recollection is that the conclusion is:

  - stricter ident checking on balance saves more headaches than it
    causes, just in terms of numbers

  - the headaches solved by stricter checking are hard to fix (because
    you unknowingly bake cruft into commit objects, and fixing that
    requires a history rewrite)

  - the headaches caused by stricter checking are easy to fix (they're
    obvious when they happen, and "git -c" lets you provide a dummy
    value to override).

We can revisit any of those conclusions, but I'd want to see a thoughtful discussion of the tradeoffs raised in past rounds, not just "the current behavior is inconvenient for me".

-Peff