git merge specifies wrong author

Question

I have a problem with latest version of git i compiled under cygwin.

At first, it displays editor to enter merge message. Previously, it went sailent. And then commit author seems to be different from normal commit.

When I do manual commit, author is User Name <username@email.com>, but when I do merge author name is Domain\username <username@username.machine.name.com>

Is there a way to make merge to specify the same auther as for manual commit? What's happening?

EDIT I have name.name and name.email specified in global git config. it seems that new git merge doesn't respect those settings.

Do you mean you have *`user.name`* and *`user.email`* set? IOW, did you set the right variables? — John Szakmeister, Nov 01 '13 at 09:54

RiggsFolly · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-01T10:23:31.013

2

Remember there are 3 places config can be entered.

Do a

cd  (to the git project folder)
git config --global -l

git config --local -l

You may also have a `--system` config

git config --system -l

and compare the user.name and user.email in all outputs. They should probably only exists in the --global but maybe you have a strange on in one of the configs.

PS. You said you had a name.name and name.email I suppose that was just a typo? They should be user.name and user.email

EDIT: After questioners reply

If you have name.name and name.email run this to create the correct settings

git config --global user.name "John Doe"
git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com

Then I would

git config --global --unset name.name 
git config --global --unset name.email

edited Nov 01 '13 at 10:23

answered Nov 01 '13 at 10:12

RiggsFolly

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Thanks for your answer, I have only a system config and I found that it has [name] section and there is name and email parameters there. So probably the problem is that wrong section name. But it works fine for manual commit still. – dhblah Nov 01 '13 at 10:16
cat pathToRepo/.git/config could also show local configs – r90t Sep 23 '15 at 11:30

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

Prompting for merge message is Git's new feature. See Why is git prompting me for a post-pull merge commit message? here on SO.

To make sure your settings are correct, check output of this:

$ git var GIT_AUTHOR_IDENT; git var GIT_COMMITTER_IDENT

This both should be your preferred identification. If you don't override it in environment, it is taken from Git's configuration.

Also Git's configuration is hierarchical, so check if you don't override the preferred values in your repository's config (.git/config):

$ git config --file --get user.name; git config --file --get user.email

should be empty.

If your settings seems correct and merges still have the generic identification you don't want to use, consider sending a bug report to the developers.

git merge specifies wrong author

2 Answers2