Re: [PATCH 4/4] ident: do not ignore empty config name/email

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 12:58:39PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > This one is perhaps questionable. Maybe somebody is relying on setting a
> > per-repo user.name to override a ~/.gitconfig value and enforce
> > auto-detection?
> 
> Thanks for splitting this step out.  1/4 and 2/4 are obvious
> improvements, and 3/4 is a very sensible fix.  Compared to those
> three, this one does smell questionable, because I do not quite see
> any other reasonable fallback other than the auto-detection if the
> user gives an empty ident on purpose.

The outcomes are basically:

  1. In strict mode (making a commit, etc), we'll die with "empty name
     not allowed". My thinking was that this is less confusing for the
     user.

  2. In non-strict mode, we'd use a blank name instead of trying your
     username (or dying if you don't have an /etc/passwd entry).

> Erroring out to say "don't do that" is probably not too bad, but
> perhaps we are being run by a script that is doing a best-effort
> conversion from $ANOTHER_SCM using a list of known authors that is
> incomplete, ending up feeding empty ident and allowing us to fall
> back to attribute them to the user who runs the script.  I do not
> see a point in breaking that user and having her or him update the
> script to stuff in a truly bogus "Unknown <unknown>" name.

Keep in mind this _only_ affects Git's config variables. So a script
feeding git via GIT_AUTHOR_NAME, etc, shouldn't change at all with this
code. If your script is doing "git -c user.name=whatever commit", I
think you should reconsider your script. :)

So I dunno. I could really go either way on it. Feel free to drop it, or
even move it into a separate topic to be cooked longer.

-Peff