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

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 11:19:41AM +0200, Michael J Gruber wrote:

quoted

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).

quoted

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.