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Re: git rebase fails with: Patch does not have a valid e-mail address.

From
KMKyle Moffett <kyle@moffetthome.net>
Date
Sep 9, 2011, 04:45 UTC
Message-ID
<CAGZ=bqJc-Yqp_hDNsfpqq-DPafrh0sDKbSfgTGgR9GGHEwiuug@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To
<CACyv8dckmRxgb9_FDTW+=1Y9bS27b3XZQCHnhjpfHiJig5p6wg@mail.gmail.com>
On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 07:47, James Blackburn <jamesblackburn@gmail.com> wrote:
Show 10 quoted lines
> I'm trying to rewrite some history and git's telling me:
>
> -bash:jamesb:lc-cam-025:33079> git rebase
> 7f58969b933745d4cb9bb128bbd3fa8d441cdb92
> First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...
> Patch does not have a valid e-mail address.
>
> Now it's true there isn't an email address for the author - the author
> no longer works for the company, and the email address was removed
> during the conversion.  Therefore the repo contains "Author <>".
I can't really speak directly on the "rebase" issue, but...

You probably don't want to remove the email address from the repository during a rewrite. When I was converting some old CVS repositories for my company I very intentionally looked up all of our old user emails to be able to convert them reliably (even though most of the addresses at that point did not work). Even for the users where I could not find a functional address I would just pick something reasonable based on the username convention at the time.

In cases where you can't accurately attribute the commit (IE: username
of "root" or "cvs" or something), you probably want to rewrite it using an
internal mailing list address.  For example, if the kernel had been in a
CVS repository with commits by "root", I would probably rewrite those
to be created by:
  Linux Kernel Developers <lkml@vger.kernel.org>

Cheers, Kyle Moffett

Previous: Junio C HamanoNext: Junio C Hamano
Message 3 of 4 in “git rebase fails with: Patch does not have a valid e-mail address.”
  1. James BlackburnSep 8, 2011
  2. Junio C HamanoSep 8, 2011
  3. Kyle MoffettSep 9, 2011
  4. Junio C HamanoSep 8, 2011

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