Re: [PATCH v2] allow user aliases for the --author parameter

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 04:31:30PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

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.

Maybe it is just me, but I am hesitant about the contamination of user.*
configuration namespace.  This patch as a general solution does not scale
well, once you start working with more than a few dozen people.

It is not just you. I think this version of the patch is much improved,
but I am still against user.$key.*. At the very least, it needs its own
namespace.

It's not just that.  Having many of these in .git/config will slow down
any unrelated thing that needs to read from config.

I am not married to the "reuse existing information" idea, but doing it
the way this sample patch does at least makes only people who uses this
feature to pay the price and only when they use it.

Not extensively tested, beyond the usual test suite, and using it for real
only once to commit this with "git commit --author=Jeff".  I wanted to say
"Michael J" instead, but there is this little chicken-and-egg problem ;-)

 builtin-commit.c |   27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 files changed, 27 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git c/builtin-commit.c w/builtin-commit.c
index 649c8be..8aae906 100644
--- c/builtin-commit.c
+++ w/builtin-commit.c

@@ -710,6 +710,30 @@ static int message_is_empty(struct strbuf *sb, int start)
 	return 1;
 }
 
+static const char *find_author_by_nickname(const char *name)
+{
+	struct rev_info revs;
+	struct commit *commit;
+	struct strbuf buf = STRBUF_INIT;
+	const char *av[20];
+	int ac = 0;
+
+	init_revisions(&revs, NULL);
+	strbuf_addf(&buf, "--author=%s", name);
+	av[++ac] = "--all";
+	av[++ac] = buf.buf;
+	av[++ac] = NULL;
+	setup_revisions(ac, av, &revs, NULL);
+	prepare_revision_walk(&revs);
+	commit = get_revision(&revs);
+	if (commit) {
+		strbuf_release(&buf);
+		format_commit_message(commit, "%an <%ae>", &buf);
+		return strbuf_detach(&buf, NULL);
+	}
+	die("No existing author found with '%s'", name);
+}
+
 static int parse_and_validate_options(int argc, const char *argv[],
 				      const char * const usage[],
 				      const char *prefix)

@@ -720,6 +744,9 @@ static int parse_and_validate_options(int argc, const char *argv[],
 	logfile = parse_options_fix_filename(prefix, logfile);
 	template_file = parse_options_fix_filename(prefix, template_file);
 
+	if (force_author && !strchr(force_author, '>'))
+		force_author = find_author_by_nickname(force_author);
+
 	if (logfile || message.len || use_message)
 		use_editor = 0;
 	if (edit_flag)