Re: git merge --date --author

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 7, 2014, 19:43 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqvbvpu757.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <87y50mxj0b.fsf@igel.home>

Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Yann Droneaud <ydroneaud@opteya.com> writes:
>
>> But I'd like to know if there's a specific reason for git merge to not
>> support --date and --author ?
>
> It's rather unusual that a merge is performed on behalf of a different
> author.

Yes. Michael's "Nobody bothered to implement it" is also correct but the reason why nobody bothered to most likely is due to "why would you want to lie?".

If the use case is to rebuild history, you would need to be able to also lie about the committer, so

>> git merge \
>>     --date "2013-12-31 23:59:59 +0000" \
>>     --author "Happy New Year <happy.new-year@gregorian.calendar>" \
>>     current-year

in such a history-rebuild script would not be sufficient. The script can set necessary environment variables to lie about both author and commiter, though, of course.