It's a frequent misconception that the user.name variable controls authentication in some way, and as a result, beginning users frequently attempt to change it when they're having authentication troubles. Document that the convention is that this variable represents some form of a human's personal name, although that is not required. In addition, address concerns about whether Unicode is supported. Use the term "personal name" as this is likely to draw the intended contrast, be applicable across cultures which may have different naming conventions, and be easily understandable to people who do not speak English as their first language. Indicate that "some form" is conventionally used, as people may use a nickname or preferred name instead of a full legal name. Point users who may be confused about authentication to an appropriate configuration option instead. Signed-off-by: brian m. carlson <sandals@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- There are a *lot* of users on Stack Overflow who have difficulty with what user.name controls, such that it may be one of the top questions. Additionally, we occasionally see issues from new contributors to Git as well. Furthermore, other VCS systems do things differently, so it's best to document the conventional expectations for users explicitly. Users may or may not read the documentation, but at least we've done our best at providing them helpful information should they choose to do so. Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt | 6 ++++++ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt b/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt index 4b90b9c12a..34a8496b0e 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-commit-tree.txt @@ -92,6 +92,12 @@ if set: (nb "<", ">" and "\n"s are stripped) +The author and committer names are by convention some form of a personal name, +as opposed to a username, although Git does not enforce or require any +particular form. Arbitrary Unicode may be used, subject to the constraints +listed above. This name has no effect on authentication; for that, see the +`credential.username` variable in linkgit::git-config[1]. + In case (some of) these environment variables are not set, the information is taken from the configuration items user.name and user.email, or, if not present, the environment variable EMAIL, or, if that is not set,
