Re: [RFC PATCH 2/2] docs: document a format for anonymous author and committer IDs

["brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2326 bytes --]

On 2022-09-30 at 20:26:41, Gwyneth Morgan wrote:
> In general, I like this proposal. It seems like a good way forward.
> 
> It should be made very clear to the user that a commit authored by a
> key-derived ID does not imply the commit is signed by that key or
> provide any security guarantees; anyone can put anything in that field,
> same as it is now. I could see someone seeing a commit authored by
> <47DEQpj8HBSa-_TImW-5JCeuQeRkm5NMpJWZG3hSuFU@_.sha256.ssh.id.git-scm.com>
> and thinking that implies the commit was signed by
> `47DEQpj8HBSa+/TImW+5JCeuQeRkm5NMpJWZG3hSuFU`.

Of course.  I'll update that when I turn this into a real series.

> On 2022-09-19 14:52:31+0000, brian m. carlson wrote:
> > +Anonymous IDs
> > +-------------
> > +
> > +Git will implement a new form of email address which is acceptable to existing
> > +implementations but is not valid according to RFC 1123.  This takes the form of
> > +an email address where the local-part contains the identifier and the domain
> > +portion starts with `_.` and then a domain specifier which specifies an
> > +authority and the meaning of the identifier.
> > +
> > +In such a case, Git will specify the username as a single U+2060 in UTF-8 (the
> > +byte sequence 0xE2 0x81 0xA0), which is a zero width non-breaking space.  This
> > +is compatible with existing implementations.
> 
> Could you add a note here explaining why that character was chosen for
> the name field? It seems like it would be easier to work with a single
> printable character like `?` or `X`, but maybe that doesn't matter here.

Sure, I'll include that there.  The author field cannot be empty for
compatibility reasons.  Since there's nothing to put there until it's
run through the mailmap, putting a single zero-width non-breaking space
produces the same rendering as nothing, and it doesn't require special
handling like "?" or "X". (Also, it should be noted that not all
languages use "?" as the question mark.)

Note that if this is mapped in the mailmap, you don't need to actually
put the personal name that exists in the commit.  The mailmap rewrites
based on the email address (or, in this case, the ID), so nobody ever
has to write the U+2060 in the mailmap.
-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Toronto, Ontario, CA

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 263 bytes --]