Re: [PATCH] doc: provide guidance on user.name format

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 15, 2019, 22:18 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqtv9db3vk.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <20190914210219.753136-1-sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>

"brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> writes:

> Users may or may not read the documentation, but at least we've done our
> best at providing them helpful information should they choose to do so.

Good.

Show 14 quoted lines

>  Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt | 6 ++++++
>  1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt b/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt
> index 4b90b9c12a..34a8496b0e 100644
> --- a/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt
> @@ -92,6 +92,12 @@ if set:
>  
>  (nb "<", ">" and "\n"s are stripped)
>  
> +The author and committer names are by convention some form of a personal name,
> +as opposed to a username, although Git does not enforce or require any
> +particular form.

I have a lot of trouble with 'username' in the context of this paragraph.

After all, you are describing the name appropriate to be set as the value of the user.name configuration, and you are trying to stress that the name used there is different from and has nothing to do with the name machines use to identify the user. In the paragraph that follows this new paragraph, there is a reference to "system user name", which is still not great but probably better than "username" above. Perhaps there is a term that is distinct enough from "user name" that is commonly used I am forgetting? I am almost tempted to say "user id", but there must be even better phrases. I dunno.

Show 7 quoted lines

> Arbitrary Unicode may be used, subject to the constraints
> +listed above. This name has no effect on authentication; for that, see the
> +`credential.username` variable in linkgit::git-config[1].
> +
>  In case (some of) these environment variables are not set, the information
>  is taken from the configuration items user.name and user.email, or, if not
>  present, the environment variable EMAIL, or, if that is not set,

Thanks.