Re: Deadname rewriting

> I know name-scrubbing is already covered in filter-branch and other
> places. But we have a scenario becoming more common that makes it a
> more sensitive topic.
>
> At $work we have a long time employee who has changed their name from
> Alice to Bob.  Bob doesn't want anyone to call him "Alice" anymore and
> is prone to be offended if they do.  This is called "deadnaming".
>
> We are able to convince most of our work tools to expunge the deadname
> from usage anywhere, but git stubbornly calls Bob "Alice" whenever
> someone asks for "git blame" or checks in "git log".
>
> We could rewrite history with filter-branch, but that's quite
> disruptive.  I found some alternatives.
>
> .mailmap seems perfect for this task, but it doesn't work everywhere
> (blame, log, etc.).  Also, it requires the deadname to be forever
> proclaimed in the .mailmap file itself.
>
> `git replace` works rather nicely, except all of Bob's old commits
> show "replaced" in the decorator list. Also, it doesn't propagate well
> from the central server since `refs/replaces` namespace isn't fetched
> normally.  But in case anyone wants it, here's what I did:
>
> git log --author=alice.smith --format="%h" --all |
>    while read hash ; do
>       GIT_EDITOR='sed -i -e s/Alice Smith/Bob Smith/g' -e
> 's/alice.smith/bob.smith/' \
>       git replace --edit $hash
>    done
> git push origin 'refs/replace/*:refs/replace/*'
>
> I'd quite like the .mailmap solution to work, and I might flesh that
> out that some day.
>
> It feels like `.git/info/grafts` would work the best if it could be
> distributed with the project, but I'm pretty sure that's a non-starter
> for many reasons.
>
> Any other ideas?  Has anyone here encountered this already?