Re: [PATCH] Add a config option to add a comment to S-o-b lines

From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com>
Date: Mar 20, 2026, 11:00 UTC
Message-ID: <4333ce73-9c30-417f-95a4-356362488444@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20260320102844.2714876-2-u.kleine-koenig@baylibre.com>

On Fri, Mar 20, 2026, at 11:28, Uwe Kleine-König wrote:

> As an employee of a consultant company I'm often requested to mention
> the customer name in the Signed-off-by line. Add a config knob

And this is a widespread practice?

Looking at the Linux Kernel there does seem to be a fair few hits.

Show 6 quoted lines

> "user.signoffcomment" to configure this and use it in automatically
> generated S-o-b lines.
>
> Signed-off-by: Uwe Kleine-König (The Capable Hub) <u.kleine-koenig@baylibre.com>
> ---
>[snip]

What are the alternatives? I imagine that the commit-msg hook with git-interpret-trailers(1) could do the same thing.

Adding extra-ident data doesn’t seem to harmonize with grouping by trailers (git-shortlog(1) with `--group=trailer:`) in the case where the same person contributes under different orgs or something across the years. The mailmap can’t be used for trailers. In that light should git(1) implicitly encourage such a practice over the alternatives like a separate trailer pre/post the `-by` trailer?

I know it’s not the same thing—just an extension—but git-commit(1) now says:

    Git does not (and will not) have a configuration variable to enable
    the --signoff command line option by default; see the commit.signoff
    entry in gitfaq(7) for more details.

This does not configure a signoff but it does put more stuff on top of a “historical mistake”.