doc: move author and committer information to git-commit(1)

While at one time it made perfect sense to store information about
configuring author and committer information in the documentation for
git commit-tree, in modern Git that operation is seldom used.  Most
users will use git commit and expect to find comprehensive documentation
about its use in the manual page for that command.

Considering that there is significant confusion about how one is to use
the user.name and user.email variables, let's put as much documentation
as possible into an obvious place where users will be more likely to
find it.

In addition, expand the environment variables section to describe their
use more fully.  Even though we now describe all of the options there
and in the configuration settings documentation, preserve the existing
text in git-commit.txt so that people can easily reason about the
ordering of the various options they can use.  Explain the use of the
author.* and committer.* options as well.

Signed-off-by: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 25 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/git.txt b/Documentation/git.txt
index b1597ac002..0093c647bf 100644
--- a/Documentation/git.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git.txt
@@ -482,13 +482,36 @@ double-quotes and respecting backslash escapes. E.g., the value
 Git Commits
 ~~~~~~~~~~~
 `GIT_AUTHOR_NAME`::
+	The human-readable name used in the author identity when creating commit or
+	tag objects, or when writing reflogs. Overrides the `user.name` and
+	`author.name` configuration settings.
+
 `GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL`::
+	The email address used in the author identity when creating commit or
+	tag objects, or when writing reflogs. Overrides the `user.email` and
+	`author.email` configuration settings.
+
 `GIT_AUTHOR_DATE`::
+	The date used for the author identity when creating commit or tag objects, or
+	when writing reflogs. See linkgit:git-commit[1] for valid formats.
+
 `GIT_COMMITTER_NAME`::
+	The human-readable name used in the committer identity when creating commit or
+	tag objects, or when writing reflogs. Overrides the `user.name` and
+	`committer.name` configuration settings.
+
 `GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL`::
+	The email address used in the author identity when creating commit or
+	tag objects, or when writing reflogs. Overrides the `user.email` and
+	`committer.email` configuration settings.
+
 `GIT_COMMITTER_DATE`::
-'EMAIL'::
-	see linkgit:git-commit-tree[1]
+	The date used for the committer identity when creating commit or tag objects, or
+	when writing reflogs. See linkgit:git-commit[1] for valid formats.
+
+`EMAIL`::
+	The email address used in the author and committer identities if no other
+	relevant environment variable or configuration setting has been set.
 
 Git Diffs
 ~~~~~~~~~