Re: GIT_COMMITTER_* and reflog

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 26, 2019, 02:20 UTC
Message-ID: <20191026022039.GE39574@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <201910252149.23787.luke@dashjr.org>

Hi Luke,

Luke Dashjr wrote:

> It appears the reflog currently allows its log data (name and date) to be
> overridden by the GIT_COMMITTER_* environment variables. At least for my
> workflow, this kinda breaks the reflog (as I regularly set GIT_COMMITTER_DATE
> to produce deterministic commit objects).

Can you say more about this? What is the workflow this is part of? Can you describe a sequence of steps and how you are affected during those steps?

> Is there a need to support this override for the reflog?

Yes.

> Is there any reason it can't be changed to use GIT_REFLOG_* instead?

Would a new GIT_REFLOG_* set of envvars that overrides GIT_COMMITTER_* work for you? If I understand correctly, you could set GIT_REFLOG_NAME and GIT_REFLOG_EMAIL to an appropriate identity, but you wouldn't have a good value to put in GIT_REFLOG_DATE.

If GIT_COMMITTER_{NAME,EMAIL} were used when writing reflogs but GIT_COMMITTER_DATE weren't, would that help with your workflow?

Thanks and hope that helps, Jonathan