Commit without setting user.email and user.name

Question

I try to commit like this

git commit --author=\'Paul Draper \' -m \'My commit message\'

but I get

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Answer 1

It is worth noting, that git on linux will default to the linux user name as given in the "gecos" field in /etc/passwd. You can output this name with grep $(whoami) /etc/passwd | cut -d ':' -f 5. If this field is empty you cannot commit without setting a user name but if it is not empty git will use it. So you'd have yourself as author and the system user as committer.

See https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/ident.c