# git ident

3 messages from 2006-04-09 to 2006-04-09. Participants: Jeremy English, Junio C Hamano, sean.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/3841

## Jeremy English, 2006-04-09 18:48

Subject: git ident
Message-ID: <44395711.7000902@jeremyenglish.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/44395711.7000902%40jeremyenglish.org

```
I keep a local project in a git archive.  After the last upgrade I get a 
ident error when trying to commit.  It works after I set the environment 
variables.  What I don't like is that the error comes up after I have 
typed in my comment, then my comment is lost, that's frustrating.  The 
other thing is I don't care if the commit is coming from a valid person, 
why require this?

```

## Junio C Hamano, 2006-04-09 19:01

Subject: Re: git ident
Message-ID: <7v7j5ybmjx.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7v7j5ybmjx.fsf%40assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net
In-Reply-To: <44395711.7000902@jeremyenglish.org>

```
Jeremy English <jhe@jeremyenglish.org> writes:

> What I don't like is that the error comes up
> after I have typed in my comment, then my comment is lost, that's
> frustrating.

Sympathizable, but presumably a new user needs to be burned only
once (set them either in $HOME/.profile or .git/config if you
want to use separate identity per project).

> ....  The other thing is I don't care if the commit is coming
> from a valid person, why require this?

Because public projects like the kernel wants to prevent
otherwise good commits from a misconfigured repository to
propagate into them.  We could have a separate per-repository
configuration to say "broken identity is not a problem for this
project", but if the user has to set that in the configuration,
she would be better off setting her identity there.

And making it the default not to require the identity is going
backwards. Our primary focus is to support public, multi-person,
distributed development project.

```

## sean, 2006-04-09 19:02

Subject: Re: git ident
Message-ID: <BAYC1-PASMTP08A5DFC9CAE6F26A5E3B68AECF0@CEZ.ICE>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/BAYC1-PASMTP08A5DFC9CAE6F26A5E3B68AECF0%40CEZ.ICE
In-Reply-To: <44395711.7000902@jeremyenglish.org>

```
On Sun, 09 Apr 2006 13:48:49 -0500
Jeremy English <jhe@jeremyenglish.org> wrote:

> I keep a local project in a git archive.  After the last upgrade I get a 
> ident error when trying to commit.  It works after I set the environment 
> variables.  What I don't like is that the error comes up after I have 
> typed in my comment, then my comment is lost, that's frustrating.  The 
> other thing is I don't care if the commit is coming from a valid person, 
> why require this?

Believe it is required to reduce the number of commits made in the 
kernel project with incorrect attribution.   To remove the need to
set environment variables, use the repo-config command to set some
defaults:

$ git repo-config user.email "you@email.com"
$ git repo-config user.name "your name"

HTH,
Sean

```
