Re: edit Author/Date metadata as part of 'git commit' $EDITOR invocation?

From: Adam Megacz <adam@megacz.com>
Date: Jan 8, 2010, 07:35 UTC
Message-ID: <xuu28wc9xd42.fsf@nowhere.com>
In-Reply-To: <7v4omz17xz.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

> Nanako Shiraishi <nanako3@lavabit.com> writes:
>> Quoting Adam Megacz <adam@megacz.com>
>>> Perhaps a preference (off by default) demanding that they be set
>>> explicitly when "git commit -m" is used?

>> Sverre pointed out why this won't work.

I agree; making it a preference will not help.

I propose instead that "git commit -e" cause the metadata headers to be provided to $EDITOR. People who care about the metadata can simply get in the habit of always passing that option when invoking "git commit".

> The approach may have been Ok 10 years ago, back when `whoami`@`hostname`,
> at least on systems that were competently maintained, gave a reasonable
> mail address for most people, but I don't think it is adequate anymore to
> majority of people,

I agree.

> So I don't think anybody minds if we refuse to work if we are going to end
> up using a name that we didn't get from an explicit end user configuration
> (i.e. GIT_*_EMAIL and GIT_*_NAME environment and user.* configuration
> variables).

I support that as well, although I'd still like to be shown the data. I wear a few different hats (each with its own email address), and I don't think I want to pick one of them as the default.

Thanks,

- a