From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: A Large Angry SCM Subject: Re: What shall we do with the GECOS field again? Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 10:30:42 -0400 Message-ID: <432ECB92.5000505@gmail.com> References: <20050919134838.GC2903@pasky.or.cz> Reply-To: gitzilla@gmail.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@osdl.org X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Mon Sep 19 16:33:21 2005 Return-path: Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1EHMfU-0008Gb-9K for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Mon, 19 Sep 2005 16:30:52 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932434AbVISOas (ORCPT ); Mon, 19 Sep 2005 10:30:48 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932433AbVISOas (ORCPT ); Mon, 19 Sep 2005 10:30:48 -0400 Received: from xproxy.gmail.com ([66.249.82.195]:23479 "EHLO xproxy.gmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932434AbVISOar (ORCPT ); Mon, 19 Sep 2005 10:30:47 -0400 Received: by xproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id i27so9983wxd for ; Mon, 19 Sep 2005 07:30:45 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:disposition-notification-to:date:from:reply-to:user-agent:x-accept-language:mime-version:to:cc:subject:references:in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=hldoegXMHEdF05QzhtYuovjHeE+sniicNaxfYRSYU+/bXvZ7ccpbSdFyfEZm/p2+LfcqHrLGVP3/jMZK1ge1xi2fzlZobzstBKG8vfbZo8e+CSsNBtbZfyaAPrORTnW4TH9lEr14Dq+n8gHOOkWBHAEY5UawEZs3f5tb7ZWOf5Y= Received: by 10.70.8.10 with SMTP id 10mr887260wxh; Mon, 19 Sep 2005 07:30:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ?10.0.0.6? ( [70.89.97.97]) by mx.gmail.com with ESMTP id i14sm297657wxd.2005.09.19.07.30.44; Mon, 19 Sep 2005 07:30:45 -0700 (PDT) User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (X11/20041207) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en To: Petr Baudis In-Reply-To: <20050919134838.GC2903@pasky.or.cz> Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Petr Baudis wrote: > Hello, > > after today's another confrontation with angry mob of real-world > Cogito users, I decided to revive the old discussion about what part of > the GECOS field should be used to prefill GIT_*_NAME. Linus stated in > that he does not want > to cut based on ',', because it might throw away the first name of gecos > fields in the "Torvalds, Linus" name. > > Well, I have to say that from the GECOS fields I saw, none use that > format, but a lot of them used the realname,phone,something,phone,... > format. The other point is, that users usually do not expect their phone > number to end up in their name information in GIT commits, which results > in a very unpleasant surprise (doubly so due to the immutable GIT > nature). Yes, they should check after the first commit if they are happy > with everything, and yes, GECOS is world-readable and therefore they > shouldn't put information they don't want to be public to it. Still they > do and I think GIT shouldn't make them unpleasant surprises. > > So my proposal (patch will follow soon) is to cut everything after the > first , or ; from the GECOS field. These are the usual delimiters used > in the GECOS field, and hopefully this will prevent polluting the > realname fields of commit headers with crap and surprising the users. > In the (I think rather rare) situation of the "Baudis, Petr"-like GECOS > fields, this will just result in only the surname being in the realname > field, which seems to be much less harmful and comparably less evil to > me. > > Opinions? > Petr, Your view of GECOS field contents (formatting) does not match my experience. Many organizations, both large and small, have standards and requirements for the contents and formatting of information in the GECOS field. Saying that the user's name is first and a particular punctuation character SHALL be the standard cut point and everyone not happy with the results should explicitly set the Git environment variables is the wrong approach. A better approach is to not use the GECOS field contents at all and force everyone the set the Git environment variables, AND/OR to include the what Git thinks the user's name name might be in the commit message template they're editing (like the file list).