From: Jeff King <peff@peff•net>
To: ZheNing Hu <adlternative@gmail•com>
Cc: "brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste•net>,
phillip.wood@dunelm•org.uk,
ZheNing Hu via GitGitGadget <gitgitgadget@gmail•com>,
git@vger•kernel.org, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox•com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] commit: add --committer option
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2025 14:15:08 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20251111191508.GA1907007@coredump.intra.peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAOLTT8RweGOmxNK=vKDv8w-8AJM7QUfLBw4WOKeY1EpSVeB6iQ@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, Nov 11, 2025 at 09:42:38PM +0800, ZheNing Hu wrote:
> > Is a "--committer" option the best solution there, though? I'd think
> > you'd want to set user.* in the repo-level .git/config (or using a
> > dir-specific include) would be less error-prone.
> >
> > That doesn't help for using two identities for the same repo, but in my
> > experience it is easier to use two separate repositories for that to
> > match the organization of the work (even if you may sometimes fetch
> > between them).
> >
> > I'm not totally opposed to the new flag, and in general I'd defer to
> > people who say they find a new feature useful. I'm just having a hard
> > time imagining a scenario where it's the best option.
>
> Sometimes it's because I forgot to configure the repository-level git user
> config and started development first. Only when I tried to correct the
> committer did I feel the pain.
OK, this workflow does make sense to me. Fixing up an earlier mistake is
inherently a one-off thing, and a command-line option is more ergonomic
than using the environment variables.
Two small thoughts:
- I suspect what you'd usually want there is for the committer and the
author to match. We have --committer-date-is-author-date for rebase,
and conceptually I think something like --committer-is-author would
do what you want here. But obviously it's less flexible, and I don't
know if it's that much easier to use.
- Because it's easy to make such mistakes, when you override the
author (so that it doesn't match the committer), git-commit prints
an extra "Author:" line in the output to make that more obvious.
Should we do the same with committer when you've overridden it? We
already do print "Committer:" when the ident was guessed from system
info, but I wonder if it would make sense to print when it was
forced. I dunno. I guess the time you most need the hint is when you
meant to use --committer and --author together, but only used
--author. But I don't know how Git would infer that case (versus the
normal case of you applying someone else's work and crediting them
with --author).
I'm not sure if either is a useful direction, but they seemed
sufficiently not-dumb for me to at least type them out. ;)
-Peff
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2025-11-11 19:15 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 44+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2025-11-09 10:22 [PATCH] commit: add --committer option ZheNing Hu via GitGitGadget
2025-11-10 9:24 ` Patrick Steinhardt
2025-11-10 14:17 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-10 17:38 ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-11 13:19 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-10 16:50 ` Phillip Wood
2025-11-10 18:01 ` brian m. carlson
2025-11-10 20:11 ` Jeff King
2025-11-10 22:06 ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-11 6:54 ` Patrick Steinhardt
2025-11-11 14:53 ` Phillip Wood
2025-11-12 16:11 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-11 13:42 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-11 19:15 ` Jeff King [this message]
2025-11-11 20:16 ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-11 21:33 ` Jeff King
2025-11-11 21:58 ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-11 22:23 ` Jeff King
2025-11-12 16:51 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-12 16:48 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-12 16:46 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-12 16:41 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-12 16:37 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-11 13:01 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-11 14:38 ` Phillip Wood
2025-11-12 15:58 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-12 17:24 ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-15 5:29 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-16 1:06 ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-17 15:06 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-16 22:12 ` Matej Dujava
2025-11-17 14:27 ` Phillip Wood
2025-11-17 15:18 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-17 15:15 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-10 16:56 ` [PATCH v2] " ZheNing Hu via GitGitGadget
2025-11-10 19:22 ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-10 19:29 ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-11 13:36 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-11 15:40 ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-12 16:23 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-12 16:55 ` [PATCH v3] " ZheNing Hu via GitGitGadget
2025-11-12 18:56 ` Junio C Hamano
2025-11-15 6:33 ` ZheNing Hu
2025-11-15 15:43 ` [PATCH v4] " ZheNing Hu via GitGitGadget
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20251111191508.GA1907007@coredump.intra.peff.net \
--to=peff@peff$(echo .)net \
--cc=adlternative@gmail$(echo .)com \
--cc=git@vger$(echo .)kernel.org \
--cc=gitgitgadget@gmail$(echo .)com \
--cc=gitster@pobox$(echo .)com \
--cc=phillip.wood@dunelm$(echo .)org.uk \
--cc=sandals@crustytoothpaste$(echo .)net \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox