From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <code@khaugsbakk.name>
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2024 18:16:05 GMT
Subject: Re: Bug: Commit fails when no global email address is set even though --author is used
Message-ID: <9c22f49a-538b-41eb-bdce-39e547c614ef@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqfry1fm2e.fsf@gitster.g>

On Fri, Feb 9, 2024, at 20:56, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> I think a three-way switch looks good. With the amendment that it steers
>> you towards `user.*` instead of setting both `author.*` and
>> `committer.*`.
>>
>> Something like
>>
>> • Author is set, not committer
>>   • Message: author is set but not committer: you might want to set
>>     *user* instead (prints suggested config)
>>
>> I can try to make a patch later.
>
> Wait. I didn't realize this when I wrote the message you are
> responding to, but we *do* already suggest settig user.* variables.
>
> If the user chose to ignore that, then there isn't much we can do to
> help, is there?
>
> Puzzled, but I'll stop here.

Aye, good point. Maybe I misremembered and/or didn’t look carefully
enough at the error message back when I set `author.*` instead of
`user.*`.

Maybe the error could say (back to the multi-way switch):

```
Author identity known, but committer identity unknown

*** Please tell me who you are.

Run

  git config --global user.email "code@khaugsbakk.name"
  git config --global user.name "Kristoffer Haugsbakk"

to set your account's default identity.
Omit --global to set the identity only in this repository.

fatal: empty ident name (for <>) not allowed
```

And then (see above) fill in the real information in the proposed config
commands if the other identity is known. Maybe that could be
accomplished with one more parameter to `ident_env_hint`:

```
static void ident_env_hint(enum want_ident whose_ident, char *other_ident)
```

(turned out to be a bit more tricky than I thought)

But that’s a slightly longer error message, which (again) can cause the
already-discussed glaze-over effect caused by the “wall of text”.

-- 
Kristoffer Haugsbakk