Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] validation on git config user.email

From: Thomas Guyot <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2025 11:39:41 -0400

On 2025-09-12 00:13, usharerose wrote:
> 
> I'm interested in understanding the design philosophy or historical
> reasons behind this 'lack' of validation.
> 

Hi usharerose,

To add to the other valid responses, email is something that can be 
validated by hooks server-side to enforce not only proper formatting but 
also valid users are being used, ex. validating against an LDAP directory.

This is much better that validating it at the command level (although 
IIRC git-comit does warn about possibly unset/invalid email addresses). 
In addition, unless git starts enforcing stricter rules on the commit 
message format (which would be a breaking change), nothing else can 
prevent someone from constructing commits with invalid emails, so checks 
by git-commit alone can't be strictly enforceable.

Furthermore, imported commits from other SCMs may have odd user 
name/email and it may be desirable to keep then in their original 
formats rather than turning them into fake email addresses.

Regards,

--
Thomas