Author and Commiter

[yelizariev]

There are two main use cases and corresponding ways to sign a commit:

Branch Style

Author=Commiter=Custom User
Example: yelizariev/git-auto-commit-action-demo-app@ac69197

PR Style

Author=Actor
Commiter=GitHub Actions
Example: yelizariev/git-auto-commit-action-demo-app@fcee21e

---

The questions to discuss:

• Do we agree about described use cases? I.e. do we need another style, e.g. Author=Commiter=Github Actions
• Do we want to support both styles in the Action?
• If yes, how to allow both styles? What could be the configs for it (config name, default values, etc.)

[yelizariev]

I suggest following solution:

1. Add two optional action args:

    commit_author_name: "My Bot"
    commit_author_email: "bot@example.com"

2. If the args are set, use them both for Author and Committer

3. If the args are not set, compute author and committer depending on GITHUB_EVENT_NAME

   3.1. For pull_request:
   Keep as it works now, i.e.

      > Author=Actor
      > Commiter=GitHub Actions
   

   3.2. For push and other events:

      > Author=Commiter=GitHub Actions
   

[yelizariev]

@stefanzweifel did you have a chance to check my suggestion: #29 (comment) ? After such an update, it would work the same way for pull requests by default

[stefanzweifel]

@yelizariev Sorry mate, life got in the way the last few days.

+1 for the new optional commit_author_* inputs. However, I would keep the logic around them a bit simpler.

If no value has been passed by a user, the values should be $GITHUB_ACTOR <$GITHUB_ACTOR@users.noreply.github.com> (Independent of any GitHub events).

I would also like to keep the committer to be "GitHub Actions actions@github.com". My idea behind the committer/author split was to allow users to differentiate commits which have been created by Actions.

Could you maybe describe more, why you would like to have different author/committer logic depending on GitHub events?
Or why you want to remove the differentiation between author and committer? Did that break your workflows?

[yelizariev]

Here is the explanation of my desigin.

Author=Commiter=Custom Value

The idea is to fully "brand" commit with custom "Bot" (technically, I just create another github user). Imagine there is a repo "jedi-tools" and some CI\CD bot named "R2D2". The maintainers may not want to have "Github Actions" Name\Avatar along with R2D2

vs

I understand your idea to mention "Github Actions" in the commit, but I prefer to do it explicitly in commit message. example:

👽 update translation files
Sent from Github Actions (see .github/workflows/translations.yml )

Also, the maintainer would want to hide any reference to Github Actions and use some funny commit description.

Author=Actor

This seems ok for Pull Request. Not sure about Branches. Do you know which value for GITHUB_ACTOR is used on branches? Does it refer to a one who made a push? If so, then it's ok for branches too. My first understanding was that it's the owner of the repository

[yelizariev]

Adjusted suggestion

I suggest following solution:

1. Add two optional action args:

    commit_author_name: "My Bot"
    commit_author_email: "bot@example.com"

2. If the args are set, then

   Author = Commiter = Custom

3. If the args are not set, then

   Author=Actor
   Commiter=GitHub Actions

[stefanzweifel]

Do you know which value for GITHUB_ACTOR is used on branches?

That is always the user which made the push.
From the docs:

The name of the person or app that initiated the workflow. For example, octocat.

---

I suggest following solution

Yeah, I think this is the way forward. I'm going to create a PR to implement this (hopefully over the next days).
And sorry for the dragged out discussion here in the issues. I hope I can answer questions faster/more frequent after January is over.