Re: [PATCH] Add committer and author names to top of COMMIT_EDITMSG.

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

"Stephen Sinclair" <radarsat1@gmail.com> writes:

> @@ -423,8 +423,18 @@ static int prepare_log_message(const char
> *index_file, const char *prefix)
>  			"#\n",
>  			git_path("MERGE_HEAD"));
>
> +    fprintf(fp, "\n");
> +
> +    fprintf(fp,
> +            "# Committer: %s\n"
> +            "# Author:    %s\n"
> +            "#\n",
> +            fmt_name(getenv("GIT_AUTHOR_NAME"),
> +                     getenv("GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL")),
> +            fmt_name(getenv("GIT_COMMITTER_NAME"),
> +                     getenv("GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL")));
> +

I'd almost agree with this patch if if added AUTHOR but not
COMMITTER, and only when AUTHOR is different from me.  That
would help reassure anybody while amending other's changes.
COMMITTER is always me and I should not reminded with extra
lines that waste precious screen real estate.

And no, I did not check if your change correctly supports the
use case of amending other's changes.  But if I recall the code
correctly, I suspect that your change doesn't.  The recorded
author is determined after the log message is prepared, way
later.

I strongly agree with Dscho that this change needs to be
defended with a good description on the reason why this is good.
If the reason is "newbie protection", I do not think this is a
good change at all.  Newbie protection is never a good reason to
make people who graduated that state to pay extra price
unconditionally.