Getting git commit error: "fatal: empty ident name ... not allowed"

Question

In git version 1.8.2.3 (in arch) I'm getting this message when doing git commit -a

fatal: empty ident name (for ) not allowed

I get this message in a brand new repository. I'm getting the same message in Ubuntu 12.10 which has 1.8.1.2

The message suggests I do

Run

 git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
 git config --global user.name "Your Name"    to set your account's default identity.

but I've done this

[tim@newton git_scratchpad]$ git config -l
core.repositoryformatversion=0
core.filemode=true
core.bare=false
core.logallrefupdates=true

git works as I expect on another machine with 1.7.9. I'm at my wits end and I don't know what to do.

Answer 1

It doesn't look like you've done

git config user.email "..."
git config user.name "..."

in a way that Git can find for *this* repository, or else Git doesn't like the values that you gave.

From the manual page, it looks like "git config -l" will list only variables set in this .git/config file. To see your global configuration values, you need to do "git config -l --global". But in some situations, Git will use your Unix user identity/e-mail for these values. My guess from these messages is that the e-mail that Git can find for you is "tim@newton", and Git knows that "newton" can't be your full e-mail and is choking on it.