Re: How dangerous is --committer-date-is-author-date these days?

As a Git user, I don’t understand why some people want to fiddle with this field in rewrite operations. It’s very hidden (apparently you have to use something like `git log --format=fuller` to reveal it).

I can’t speak for power users. But regular users? Well I see questions about being very deliberate about setting this field on rewrite operations on StackOverflow (at least one time). But I can only guess *why* they are particular about it (this part is often not explained). And I don’t know if they know the true “spirit” behind the field. Maybe they are of the impression that committer date and author date *ought to* be the same?

Of course the aforementioned patch by Philip[1] was done in order to make the available options between the two rebase backends consistent. This option `--committer-date-is-author-date` was first added in 3f01ad66549 (am: Add --committer-date-is-author-date option, 2009-01-22). The email that I could find[2] for the patch has no follow-up replies.

That option was added to git-am(1). So not a rewrite operation. Rather a “lie” (as it was documented on that commit).

Which ties me back to the “regular user” point: most people don’t use email workflows. So adding commits from email is not something they do. Surely most uses of this option is in git-rebase(1). And most users might take for a given that author=committer. In turn also that committer-date=author-date.

Again for those who care enough to hunt down this long (words) option.

🔗 1: https://lore.kernel.org/git/20200817174004.92455-4-phillip.wood123@gmail.com/ 🔗 2: https://lore.kernel.org/git/20090124101750.6117@nanako3.lavabit.com/