GIT commits from unknown users in Bitbucket Cloud

Summary

• The purpose of this article is to detail why you may see commits from unknown users within your repositories and provide instructions on how to get these mapped to the correct users

Environment

• Bitbucket Cloud repository

Diagnosis

• When checking your commit list, you notice that there are commits that appear to be from users that are not members of your workspace

• Often there will be a blank avatar displaying next to the commit, with no user account linked

Cause

• As long as the repository in question is a private repository - only workspace users who have explicit access to that repository are able to perform commits to that repository

• What has likely happened, is that the user who made the commit is a repository member - but they had the wrong email address configured in their local GIT configuration at the time they made the commit

• The commit is still made to the repository, but the incorrect email address can't be mapped to a user account on the workspace

• Local git configuration is how GIT-based DVCS systems recognise the owner of a commit, and this is not limited to Bitbucket Cloud

Solution

1. Navigate to the commit and click the ellipsis (...) button >  View Raw Commit to check the recorded username/email address to see if there is any identifiable information that may reveal who this user might be 

2. You may also execute the following command to check the specific commit hash (replace with the actual hash) and compare the author/committer:

   1 2 // Compare author/committer: git cat-file -p commithash

3. If this is still unclear, you will need to request that the members of your workspace check their respective local git configuration for this email address, and update their local git configuration with an email tied to their account to ensure that future commit data is accurate:

   1 2 3 4 5 // Check the current configuration git config --global --list // Update the current configuration git config --global user.name "FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME" git config --global user.email "MY_NAME@example.com"

4. Once the configuration is correct, and the user has been identified, you will then need to map the incorrect email as an alias to the user account - this will ensure that those commits are now associated correctly with the user account who made them