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The guides I’ve read so far on Git say that I should go into the config and specify my name and my e-mail address. They don’t elaborate; they just say to do it.
Why does Git need my e-mail address? And, more importantly, if I make my repo publicly available, via GitHub for example, will my e-mail address be visible to everyone (including spambots)?
Git uses your email address to identify you, as well as do other tasks (such as sign a tag with a GPG key). Your email address does get embedded as part of your identity in commit logs, etc., along with the name you specify. For example, the “author” field in a commit log would show up as:
So the information is available to anyone with a copy of the repo, since it acts as an identifier.
Your email probably won’t be visible to spambots, though, unless you use Gitweb, or a service like GitHub, to make your repo available through a web interface (merely putting it on the Internet doesn’t do this).
I suppose you could fill in a fake email address or use an empty string or space or something (I don’t think Git checks the format or validity of the email), but the email is useful if someone who clones the repo needs to send you a patch or contact you in some way.