Re: stupid error - is there a way to fix?

From: Chris Packham <judge.packham@gmail.com>
Date: May 17, 2010, 18:57 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTimFZ1GCBIf9y8Gkz-AnG-TmvWU_WXfjgw1olmKi@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTin32LGzfA79XYfivdun0EwWTs8p_yBeR030_2N2@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Eugene Sajine <euguess@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Hi,
>
> Wanted to share some Admin nightmares;)
>
> Is there a way to correct a stupid error when few commits were made
> under username Your Name and the same kind of stub email address
> instead of normal name?
>
> Thanks,
> Eugene
> --

There are a few ways (that I know of) to fix this.

If you haven't pushed yet you can use "git rebase -i" [1] and edit the commit with "git commit --amend --reset-author" to fix up your local branch. Note that --reset-author is a fairly recent addition to git but the --author="name <email>" option is available for older versions.

If no-one has cloned/pulled from that repository you can use "git filter-branch" [2] with an environment filter to update the name. Using filter branch (or anything else that re-writes history) is a last resort as it will cause problems for anyone that has cloned your repository.

The preferred, non-destructive, method would be to include a .mailmap file [3] which can be used to remap authors names and email addresses. Some of the git tools can be told to ignore the mailmap so that stub email address will still be visible if people know where to look but thats usually fine unless you _really_ want to hide an email address for some reason.

--- [1] http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-rebase.html#_interactive_mode [2] http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-filter-branch.html [3] http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-shortlog.html#_mapping_authors