5 ms·

Pushing code to GitHub as Linus Torvalds

27 points by jayhuang 13y ago

knome 13y ago
You can't stop this without breaking git. There is no master repository in git, where user access can be checked. As far as a git repo is concerned, you could easily be checking in a commit Linus sent you, in which case it would be doing the exactly right thing. If you want confirmation that a certain person has done something in git, you'll have to have them sign the commit in some fashion. github is correcting in politely passing this off as a non-issue.
- csmuk 13y ago
  This is one of many reasons why we still use SVN. Every commit is authenticated against our LDAP server so is technically signed against a user based on their credentials.
  - sandfox 13y ago
    You could (and many) do the same thing with git.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - MetaCosm 13y ago
    ... you can sign your git commits with GPG, which is a hell of a lot better than "technically signed" via random internal LDAP and implied relationships. Git has an intentional separation between author of a commit, and the person who signed-off on it. So if you hired an outside contractor to work a little bit of code, he could write it, send it to you, and then an internal person with a GPG key would review it and sign-off on it. It would retain the original author (contractor) and it would retain the person who put it into your code and "signed off" on it. What other non-reasons do you have for using SVN?
    - jimmaswell 13y ago
      It's a hell of a lot simpler if you don't need a ton of branches, and better integrated with Windows.
      - MetaCosm 13y ago
        There are lots of wonderful integrations / applications for windows now. The days of windows being awful with Git are behind us. Hell of a lot simpler if you don't need ANY branches. Merging is still a goddamn nightmare with SVN.
        zalew 13y ago
        > There are lots of wonderful integrations / applications for windows now. The days of windows being awful with Git are behind us. Please tell me more, how I can get behind Git being awful on Win7 since I have to use this OS at work (and since I've been on Linux personally for a few years, I have no clue). I have only some crappy git console and my config even doesn't work outside of it. Thank you.
        katbyte 13y ago
        msysgit + tortoise git make it pretty simple, and Visual Studio 2013 has built in git support (however I've not used it very much)
        zalew 13y ago
        I don't use VS, and as it turns out, the crappy console I'm talking about is this msysgit. The lack of a decent consistent terminal is my biggest pain in win7. cmd, powershell, msysgit - they all are total crap and every one works differently. And my Git settings aren't working from Eclipse, basically the only place they work is this git terminal. Sorry, but that's not 'wonderful integration'. On Linux everything just works.
        13y ago
plorkyeran 13y ago
That is just how git works, and there isn't really anything GitHub can do about it. Marking commits as being by the person who pushed them rather than being by the person who wrote them is the closest you could come, and that would be terrible. It's not even really fixable in a DVCS at all short of not supporting unsigned commits.
mineo 13y ago
I don't think this is a problem with GitHub, it is - if you want to call it a problem at all - a problem with git itself because noone stops you from using any email adress and name as user.email and user.name in your git config. You could do the same thing on bitbucket, your companys git repositories, git repositories on your own server etc.
- toggle 13y ago
  Coincidentally, I just tried this on Bitbucket a couple of days ago. For your activity feed, it must check the username you used to authenticate when you pushed, not what email address is on the commit. The activity feed on my profile says the commit is mine -- however, when viewing the commit, it says it's by the other person whose email address I used. Not sure if GitHub does the same thing.
Aqueous 13y ago
'I understand this feature has the benefits of allowing people to push commits with emails they don’t own, such as ‘example@example.com’ that I occasionally use, but having your commits attributed to a different user is a whole different issue.' More than that it makes it so the distributed nature of Git is preserved. If I pull from someone who committed a bunch of stuff under their own name but isn't a user on GitHub, then push up to GitHub, GitHub won't be able to just reject the commits from the user who is not on GitHub - it will have to reject the push entirely. Thus, there is no way around this without losing all the benefits of Git. Perhaps a way around it would be to sign all commits where the committer has the same email address as an existing GitHub user, and then check the signature against the GitHubber's known key, and reject it if the signature doesn't check out. But having to sign commits if you are a GitHub user adds extra hasssle, and what if an unsigned commit accidentally makes its way into the history? What a pain. Everyone would always have to commit with the possibility of being able to be pushed up to GitHub in mind.
aidenn0 13y ago
I can set the From: field of an e-mail to <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> and similarly impersonate Linus in an e-mail. Clearly e-mail is broken.
- gregory144 13y ago
  Many would argue that email IS broken.
IbJacked 13y ago
I remember reporting impersonation as a problem to the gitolite project years ago and was told in no uncertain terms that I just didn't understand the distributed nature of git (which was true at the time).
stormbrew 13y ago
If a solution to this is really needed (which seems somewhat dubious), github could allow people to register pgp public keys with their account and then users could sign their commits. Github could then indicate that a commit is verified as being from that user.
- MetaCosm 13y ago
  Git already has this, it is already a thing, since 1.7.9. I can sign my commits, you can validate my signature, if we both care, it is out there already.
  - stormbrew 13y ago
    I'm aware. I'm saying github could provide an interface to indicate verified signatures to the github account. It's because git has signed commits that this suggestion is even possible.
cliftonk 13y ago
Commits not pushed with a user's public key could be marked as unverified in the web UI until the logged-in user verifies ownership.

27 points by jayhuang 13y ago

knome 13y ago

You can't stop this without breaking git. There is no master repository in git, where user access can be checked. As far as a git repo is concerned, you could easily be checking in a commit Linus sent you, in which case it would be doing the exactly right thing. If you want confirmation that a certain person has done something in git, you'll have to have them sign the commit in some fashion. github is correcting in politely passing this off as a non-issue.

csmuk 13y ago
This is one of many reasons why we still use SVN. Every commit is authenticated against our LDAP server so is technically signed against a user based on their credentials.
- sandfox 13y ago
  You could (and many) do the same thing with git.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- MetaCosm 13y ago
  ... you can sign your git commits with GPG, which is a hell of a lot better than "technically signed" via random internal LDAP and implied relationships. Git has an intentional separation between author of a commit, and the person who signed-off on it. So if you hired an outside contractor to work a little bit of code, he could write it, send it to you, and then an internal person with a GPG key would review it and sign-off on it. It would retain the original author (contractor) and it would retain the person who put it into your code and "signed off" on it. What other non-reasons do you have for using SVN?
  - jimmaswell 13y ago
    It's a hell of a lot simpler if you don't need a ton of branches, and better integrated with Windows.
    - MetaCosm 13y ago
      There are lots of wonderful integrations / applications for windows now. The days of windows being awful with Git are behind us. Hell of a lot simpler if you don't need ANY branches. Merging is still a goddamn nightmare with SVN.
      - zalew 13y ago
        > There are lots of wonderful integrations / applications for windows now. The days of windows being awful with Git are behind us. Please tell me more, how I can get behind Git being awful on Win7 since I have to use this OS at work (and since I've been on Linux personally for a few years, I have no clue). I have only some crappy git console and my config even doesn't work outside of it. Thank you.
        katbyte 13y ago
        msysgit + tortoise git make it pretty simple, and Visual Studio 2013 has built in git support (however I've not used it very much)
        zalew 13y ago
        I don't use VS, and as it turns out, the crappy console I'm talking about is this msysgit. The lack of a decent consistent terminal is my biggest pain in win7. cmd, powershell, msysgit - they all are total crap and every one works differently. And my Git settings aren't working from Eclipse, basically the only place they work is this git terminal. Sorry, but that's not 'wonderful integration'. On Linux everything just works.
        13y ago

plorkyeran 13y ago

That is just how git works, and there isn't really anything GitHub can do about it. Marking commits as being by the person who pushed them rather than being by the person who wrote them is the closest you could come, and that would be terrible. It's not even really fixable in a DVCS at all short of not supporting unsigned commits.

mineo 13y ago

I don't think this is a problem with GitHub, it is - if you want to call it a problem at all - a problem with git itself because noone stops you from using any email adress and name as user.email and user.name in your git config. You could do the same thing on bitbucket, your companys git repositories, git repositories on your own server etc.

toggle 13y ago
Coincidentally, I just tried this on Bitbucket a couple of days ago. For your activity feed, it must check the username you used to authenticate when you pushed, not what email address is on the commit. The activity feed on my profile says the commit is mine -- however, when viewing the commit, it says it's by the other person whose email address I used. Not sure if GitHub does the same thing.

Aqueous 13y ago

'I understand this feature has the benefits of allowing people to push commits with emails they don’t own, such as ‘example@example.com’ that I occasionally use, but having your commits attributed to a different user is a whole different issue.' More than that it makes it so the distributed nature of Git is preserved. If I pull from someone who committed a bunch of stuff under their own name but isn't a user on GitHub, then push up to GitHub, GitHub won't be able to just reject the commits from the user who is not on GitHub - it will have to reject the push entirely. Thus, there is no way around this without losing all the benefits of Git. Perhaps a way around it would be to sign all commits where the committer has the same email address as an existing GitHub user, and then check the signature against the GitHubber's known key, and reject it if the signature doesn't check out. But having to sign commits if you are a GitHub user adds extra hasssle, and what if an unsigned commit accidentally makes its way into the history? What a pain. Everyone would always have to commit with the possibility of being able to be pushed up to GitHub in mind.

aidenn0 13y ago

I can set the From: field of an e-mail to <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> and similarly impersonate Linus in an e-mail. Clearly e-mail is broken.

gregory144 13y ago
Many would argue that email IS broken.

IbJacked 13y ago

I remember reporting impersonation as a problem to the gitolite project years ago and was told in no uncertain terms that I just didn't understand the distributed nature of git (which was true at the time).

stormbrew 13y ago

If a solution to this is really needed (which seems somewhat dubious), github could allow people to register pgp public keys with their account and then users could sign their commits. Github could then indicate that a commit is verified as being from that user.

MetaCosm 13y ago
Git already has this, it is already a thing, since 1.7.9. I can sign my commits, you can validate my signature, if we both care, it is out there already.
- stormbrew 13y ago
  I'm aware. I'm saying github could provide an interface to indicate verified signatures to the github account. It's because git has signed commits that this suggestion is even possible.

cliftonk 13y ago

Commits not pushed with a user's public key could be marked as unverified in the web UI until the logged-in user verifies ownership.