Re: [PATCH] allow user aliases for the --author parameter

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

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 11:19:41AM +0200, Michael J Gruber wrote:
>
>> This allows the use of author abbreviations when specifying commit
>> authors via the --author option to git commit. "--author=$key" is
>> resolved by looking up "user.$key.name" and "user.$key.email" in the
>> config.
>
> This seems like a reasonable feature to me, though two high-level
> questions:

In short, I'm in agreement with almost everything you said in your
response, in that I think (1) this is a reasonable thing to want to do,
(2) this should use an external mail-alias file, not set of in-config
values, possibly sharing the database with send-email, (3) committer
should be treated the same way (shouldn't the effort be the same?
otherwise there is something wrong in the existing code structure).

>> In an ideal word, all my collaborators would exchange changes as git 
>> ...
>> --author argument without "<>".
>
> This justification should probably go into the commit message, not the
> cover letter. When you are writing it, think about the reader who will
> bisect or blame to your commit a year from now. Will they want to see
> just _what_ you did, or _why_ you did it?

Absolutely.  What the change does is already visible in "log -p".  The
reason behind the change, "Why", is much more important, and Michael's
justification was very well written.  It should have been in the proposed
commit log message.