gix fetch requires a configured user while git fetch does not

[lu-zero]

Current behavior 😯

My test environment is a completely empty chroot:

$ gix clone https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo
$ cd gentoo
$ gix fetch

It produces

Error: Failed to update references to their new position to match their remote locations

Caused by:
    0: The reflog could not be created or updated
    1: reflog messages need a committer which isn't set

Expected behavior 🤔

It would be nice to either provide the same reference to how to setup the configuration as git does

Git behavior

git fetch works w/out requiring a user/email configured.

[Byron]

Thanks a lot for reporting.

It turns out that gitoxide already has a special case to get the clone done without a user configured, where it fills in no name configured during clone <noEmailAvailable@example.com> as signature. It's a special case just for the clone though, which is why fetch fails.

Git has a different mechanism, it exacts login data and makes up an email like this: Sebastian Thiel <byron@mbpro-63.local>. Gitoxide doesn't do that silently, and leaves this to the application layer, gix (the CLI) in this case. As a developer tool there isn't a need to mimick git (CLI) perfectly, but it would be fine if some handling for that is contributed.

I think applications can already configure an author/committer fallback, which could be obtained by checking the login, it's just not implemented in gix (CLI).