Change how identities are shown in commit page

[n0toose]

The username is now always shown next to full names. The commit
information should use the full name associated with the commit and the
signature information should use the full name associated with the
profile, provided that it exists.

This should remove any confusion if the author decides to use different
names under the same account at a later point in time.

In some cases, the full names shown in specific fields may differ from
the profile's full name, as some other metadata may be preferred
instead.

[n0toose]

• Tests weren't modified. I am not sure what I should modify exactly, or if I should modify anything.
• Original PR: https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls/631

I was going to just send this to Forgejo, but it'd end up here eventually, so. I am linking the previous PR as it shows some additional context regarding the decision as to how I chose how the names are going to be displayed to the user. I hope that this looks visually better / more informational than in other forges.

[jolheiser]

The following is an image reference using my actual settings as I have them on various instances.
(It really drives home who the author of that commit is 😂)

---

I can see where this could be beneficial, but it almost seems like there should be a check on whether the names match, in which case it could just use one. i.e. jolheiser (jolheiser) doesn't look more clear, it just looks duplicated, however the GPG signature does look a bit nicer because my full name is shown with my handle next to it.
I can imagine that's also more helpful when people use less obvious handles than mine.

[silverwind]

We should unify the way author name is display. Sometimes it's username, sometimes it's full name, sometimes it's both. I'd say always display full name if present. If full name and username match, display only full name. A custom render function will be needed.

[n0toose]

I tried to consider the following behind my design:

• commits are snapshots of the past, the name can be changed at a later point in time (marriage, trans, etc.), it may not be worth showing all commit metadata as accurately as possible, which is why I use the Gitea profile's full name for commits. However, I insisted on being precise as far as PGP is concerned.
• commit pages can (and perhaps should) be more detailed than the overviews
• (extreme edge case) multiple people may be using the same account or identity
• people shouldn't look at the avatar to compare whether the display name belongs to the same person

[n0toose]

If full name and username match, display only full name.

ACK.

[wxiaoguang]

The easier way is to use a template like: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/templates/repo/search_name.tmpl

The "name displaying" logic usually is:

• If DefaultShowFullName && FullName is not empty: $name ($fulllname)
• Else: $name

At the moment the Gitea's name displaying is not clear / not consistent, that's a historical problem.

If you think search_name.tmpl could help, then it could be used here IMO (although the template name doesn't look good , or it's not usable due to its layout 🤣 )

If you prefer your current approach, it could also look good.

(I think I will do some "name displaying" refactoring in following PRs ....... 😄 )

[n0toose]

Well, I also think that having way too many places with different ideas as to how a name should be shown is a bit cursed, but I think it'd make sense to get a bit more verbose in commit pages. The goal is to push the state of the UI towards a better direction (and not just introduce more edge cases and confusing inconsistencies) but I am not exactly sure what to do here without essentially having my hand held so as to fix this problem for good.

There's also the name of the owner of the key that a commit was signed with, which is not really shown everywhere.

[n0toose]

I am also not sure how to deal with the committer case.

https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/62b0716205c658c20864767ea0fce8408663e536/templates/repo/commit_page.tmpl#L168

Can their username be discovered somehow?

[wxiaoguang]

Can their username be discovered somehow?

I haven't understood the question "discover the username".

If I understand correctly, if the .Verification.CommittingUser and .Commit.Committer are User models, then the .Name is the username?

[n0toose]

If I understand correctly, if the .Verification.CommittingUser and .Commit.Committer are User models, then the .Name is the username?

This is the part that has managed to confuse me very much, .Name seems to be the full name (as presented in their profile).

[wxiaoguang]

I think I somewhat understand these variables now. The details are in routers/web/repo/commit.go, func Diff(ctx *context.Context):

• Author: it is a User model
• Commit.Author: it is modules/git/Commit and modules/git/Signature:
  • Name string // Name represents a person name. It is an arbitrary string. It's the name from git commit
  • In case Gitea can't find a matched user in its database for this commit
• Verification.SigningUser: it is modules/git/CommitVerification and User model

[n0toose]

I just glanced over the code, thank you for the hints and the help here. So, just to be sure, is it true that we can't correlate committers and their respective on-platform usernames as things are right now?

[wxiaoguang]

is it true that we can't correlate committers and their respective on-platform usernames as things are right now?

If the commit user can be found in Gitea's database (hmm, many more details, eg: by email, by key) as a site user, then these two "names" are correlated. Otherwise, not correlated because no clue to correlate them.

[n0toose]

If the commit user can be found in Gitea's database (hmm, many more details, eg: by email, by key) as a site user, then these two "names" are correlated.

Hi, I am not sure if I can implement all that by myself because of a personal lack of experience and a hesitance of dealing with PII like this...

Small edit: I am still unsure how "exposing" variables in a template, I think this is beyond my current skill level.

[wxiaoguang]

I think this PR could help you: Add a helper function dumpVar to help debugging and development #24262 (at least, we can know what variable type it is)

[n0toose]

Most of the things I typed out earlier regarding "committers being completely ignored" were wrong. .Verification.CommittingUser made me think that this parameter had something to do with PGP signatures, which was not the case.

I managed to figure out how the template works in greater detail by playing around with the code, breaking things, then undoing those things only to realize that the features that I described as "missing" existed in the first place. Anyways, this latest push is on top of the latest revision of the tree and ensures that Committers will follow the same format: Full Name As Stored In Examined Resource (Username) (excluding PGP key name, which uses Forgejo profile name instead)

The matching name + username case was considered in this case too.

[n0toose]

[wxiaoguang]

Generally L-G-T-M.

Could we have some inline comments about the types of each variable? eg:

{{/* .Author: User model */}}

{{/* .Commit.Author:  modules/git/Commit, modules/git/Signature */}}

{{/* .Verification.SigningUser:  modules/git/CommitVerification, User model */}}

It would help future developers a lot.

[n0toose]

@wxiaoguang Apart from the comment that I haven't addressed at all yet (the logic behind this PR is extremely hard to follow if you haven't extensively worked with it over the past 24 hours to me), do you have any suggestions as to how my approach could be done in a cleaner manner?

[wxiaoguang]

do you have any suggestions as to how my approach could be done in a cleaner manner?

Sorry I have no idea at the moment (I haven't got enough time and I haven't had enough understanding for this problem yet). I might take a look in the future if I have enough time but I can't guarantee at the moment.

So I hide my reviews. If other reviewers have ideas or approve, feel free to continue. Thank you.

[wxiaoguang]

I tried to read the code again, I think it could be like this: fix name display n0toose#1

[n0toose]

Blindly merged for now, I'll get back to this at a later point (this is still on my radar).

[wxiaoguang]

Found some problems in my code, so added a new commit to fix them, and added some comments, I think the "user name" will be rendered in the following formats now:

• If ShowFulName== false:
  • CommitterName // if the CommitterName == UserName
  • CommitterName (UserName) // if the CommitterName != UserName
• If ShowFulName== true:
  • CommitterName // if the CommitterName == UserName and no FullName
  • CommitterName (FullName) // if the CommitterName == UserName and FullName exists
  • CommtiterName (UserName) // if the CommitterName != UserName and no FullName
  • CommitterName (UserName / FullName) // if the CommitterName != UserName and FullName exists

[n0toose]

Really sorry for taking up your time with this earlier (thank you nevertheless!), but I think that I lack the time and concentration to actually solve this problem properly right now. I think that a better approach would be modifying the GetDisplayName() function properly instead of relying on a lot of conditionals in the web UI itself, which increases the overhead and is plain confusing.

If I am to pick this up again (which I remain interested in, just not interested enough to do this right now), I will do so in a new PR (maybe with a much more limited scope for starters). For now, I'll leave the space for someone else to do this, just in case this person appears.