Re: [PATCH] Add committer and author names to top of COMMIT_EDITMSG.

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 11, 2008, 23:36 UTC
Message-ID: <7v3at42avd.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <9b3e2dc20801111210n7bd7a71cw437819aa6253ae85@mail.gmail.com>

"Stephen Sinclair" <radarsat1@gmail.com> writes:

Show 16 quoted lines

> @@ -423,8 +423,18 @@ static int prepare_log_message(const char
> *index_file, const char *prefix)
>  			"#\n",
>  			git_path("MERGE_HEAD"));
>
> +    fprintf(fp, "\n");
> +
> +    fprintf(fp,
> +            "# Committer: %s\n"
> +            "# Author:    %s\n"
> +            "#\n",
> +            fmt_name(getenv("GIT_AUTHOR_NAME"),
> +                     getenv("GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL")),
> +            fmt_name(getenv("GIT_COMMITTER_NAME"),
> +                     getenv("GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL")));
> +

I'd almost agree with this patch if if added AUTHOR but not COMMITTER, and only when AUTHOR is different from me. That would help reassure anybody while amending other's changes. COMMITTER is always me and I should not reminded with extra lines that waste precious screen real estate.

And no, I did not check if your change correctly supports the use case of amending other's changes. But if I recall the code correctly, I suspect that your change doesn't. The recorded author is determined after the log message is prepared, way later.

I strongly agree with Dscho that this change needs to be defended with a good description on the reason why this is good. If the reason is "newbie protection", I do not think this is a good change at all. Newbie protection is never a good reason to make people who graduated that state to pay extra price unconditionally.