Difference between author and committer in Git?

I am trying to make a commit like

git commit --author="John Doe <[email protected]>" -m "<the usual commit message>"

where John Doe is some user in whose name I want to make the commit.

It appears all right in git log. However, when I do a gitk, the author name is correct, but the committer name is picked from my global git config settings (and is thus set to my name/email).

Questions

  1. What is the difference between the two (committer vs author)?

  2. Should I be setting the committer as well to the other user?

  3. If yes, how?

3 Answers
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