Subject: Re: Stop a git commit by a specific author using pre-commit hook

From: Neal Kreitzinger <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:41:18 -0600

On 3/8/2012 7:15 PM, Adrian Cornish wrote:
> My plan is to use git to keep track of changes in /etc but when
> committing I want to have the person making the change specify
> themselves as author by adding the --author option on the commandline.
>
> So I would like to stop accidental commits as root.
>
> I tried creating this pre-commit hook but it is not working - git var
> is still returning root even if I specify the author on commit line.
>
> AUTHOR=`git var GIT_AUTHOR_IDENT | sed -n 's/^\(.*>\).*$/\1/p'`
> if [ "$AUTHOR" == "root<root@localhost>" ];
> then
>     echo "Please commit under your own user name instead of \"$AUTHOR\":"
>     echo 'git commit --author="Adrian"'
>     echo "or if your name is not already in logs use full ident"
>     echo 'git commit --author="Adrian Cornish<a@localhost>"'
>     exit 1
> fi
> exit 0

We use whoami in our pre-commit hook to see who the user is that is 
doing the commit.  I think you could also use GIT_COMMITTER_NAME or 
linux $USER environment variables.  Either way, the --author seems like 
an unnecessary and unreliable way to get the username.  You're relying 
on the user to remember or obey that step.  By doing --author, you also 
seem to be implying that the git commit author value may not be the same 
as the user doing the commit so that would also ruin the original commit 
author data audit trail.  I haven't used these particular git 
environment variables, but I suspect they are dependent upon the user 
having their gitconfig filled out properly, so the linux whoami and 
$USER are probably more reliable.  If people can su to root then $USER 
will not work because it will still be set to their original user name 
(before they did su to root).  Therefore, "whoami" seems like your best 
solution.

v/r,
neal