Re: [PATCH] allow user aliases for the --author parameter

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 22, 2008, 06:09 UTC
Message-ID: <7vljypd1ho.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20080821200255.GB27705@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

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> On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 11:19:41AM +0200, Michael J Gruber wrote:
>
>> This allows the use of author abbreviations when specifying commit
>> authors via the --author option to git commit. "--author=$key" is
>> resolved by looking up "user.$key.name" and "user.$key.email" in the
>> config.
>
> This seems like a reasonable feature to me, though two high-level
> questions:

In short, I'm in agreement with almost everything you said in your response, in that I think (1) this is a reasonable thing to want to do, (2) this should use an external mail-alias file, not set of in-config values, possibly sharing the database with send-email, (3) committer should be treated the same way (shouldn't the effort be the same? otherwise there is something wrong in the existing code structure).

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>> In an ideal word, all my collaborators would exchange changes as git 
>> ...
>> --author argument without "<>".
>
> This justification should probably go into the commit message, not the
> cover letter. When you are writing it, think about the reader who will
> bisect or blame to your commit a year from now. Will they want to see
> just _what_ you did, or _why_ you did it?

Absolutely. What the change does is already visible in "log -p". The reason behind the change, "Why", is much more important, and Michael's justification was very well written. It should have been in the proposed commit log message.