Re: [PATCH] commit: add --committer option

>
> ZheNing Hu <adlternative@gmail.com> writes:
>
> >> Isn't it more like "You need to run with --author to correct the
> >> authorship by amending the commit *anyway*, but while doing so, the
> >> committer information will automatically be corrected"?  As I said
> >> earlier in a separate message, the author and the committer are not
> >> symmetric, so having "--author" does make sense in the above picture,
> >> while "--committer", as Phillip points out, much less.
> >>
> >
> > Well, I admit that perhaps the design philosophy of author/committer is
> > inconsistent (which has caused too much trouble), but for users, a consistent
> > parameter interface is easier to understand and use.
>
> I do not think it is about design philosophy at all, though.
>
> The distinction comes from the difference between what "author" and
> "committer" fields record.  The committer records the identity of
> the person who was at the keyboard when the commit object was
> created.  The author records the identity of the person who wrote
> the change that the committer is turning into a commit.  There is no
> symmetry between them, hence there is no inconsistency here.
>

> And it also comes from the actual human user behaviour.
>
> Many authors can pass their patches to a smaller number of
> committers who make them into part of the official project history,
> so when a commit is made, there is much stronger need to tweak who
> the author is for the commit than to tweak who the committer is.  On
> the other hand, it is rare (if ever done) for multiple committers to
> share a single shell terminal session and take turns to make commit,
> where you would need to be able to say "this invocations of 'git
> commit' command is done by person X, who is different from the one
> who made the previous commit in this same shell session".
>