Re: signed-off-by not overwritten with GIT_AUTHOR_NAME...?

[Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>]

On Wed, Apr 07, 2021 at 03:42:01PM +0200, Matthias Beyer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just found that overwriting the GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL and GIT_AUTHOR_NAME env
> variables does alter the author when committing, but does not overwrite the
> --signoff entry. Is this intentional?

It is intentional. The identity used for signoff is the committer's, not
the author's. The documentation for `--signoff` in git-commit(1) says
(emphasis mine):

  [...] it typically certifies that *committer* has the rights to submit
  this work

And indeed 'sequencer.c:append_signoff()' calls 'fmt_name()' with
WANT_COMMITTER_IDENT, not WANT_AUTHOR_IDENT.

> To reproduce:
>
>     cd /tmp
>     mkdir foo
>     cd foo
>     git init
>     touch foo
>     git add foo
>     GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL=nobody@nomail.de GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="Someone Else" git commit -s -m test
>     git show
>

All of the above is to say that if you s/AUTHOR/COMMITTER in your
example above, it will do what you expect.

Thanks,
Taylor