Force commit date

Hi all,

Some time ago, I used to make 7zip backups of my project directory to keep an history of my changes. (I've kept all of them in separated 7z files) I was then living in darkness. (Even though I tried svn but was somehow not happy with it) Now I've found the light, and git is the best tool around (along with Hg I guess).

I am learning git at the moment and I would like to restore all my 7zipped backups one after the other, use meld to apply each change in the code + directory structure and then git to commit each of them, chronologically, to finally obtain a complete git history of my changes (I even have "commit commentaries" in a special text file, yes I tried to do things properly with basic tools.)

This should be feasible, but what would be very cool in this very special case is if I could force the commit date to reflect the real date each "commit" (read : "zip") was done with my old method in last year, and not the date of my convertion to git.

If it is not, that's not a big deal, but I'd really like to know how to do this, and have my different projects on a git history. (I even have one or two "secondary branches")

There might be an option I am not aware of. (I have seen on this forum / mailing list some people playing with dates but it was the case of mailboxes and "git am") http://n2.nabble.com/how-to-force-a-commit-date-matching-info-from-a-mbox---td2200613.html Remember I'm a beginner trying to learn git, so please bear with me.

Thank you!

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 19:30, Zabre <427@free.fr> wrote:

Indeed, try 'import-tars.perl' in the /contrib directory of git.git :).

Sverre Rabbelier-2 wrote:

Thank you Sverre, I'll have a look at this! (sorry for my "wondering" post, I had not seen yours)

I'm wondering : maybe the trick is outside git? Maybe is it possible to specify a "forced date" at which an action (a "git commit" in this case) is done. Some command that would wrap around the git commit command and tell the system "apply this, but do it as if now was 2008-08-23 06:15:34". What do you think? This would be very interesting to know. (btw I'm running Linux obviously)

Zabre, 29.01.2009:

man git-commit-tree -> GIT_COMMITTER_DATE

Though only in the git-commit-tree docs, it also works with git-commit. Maybe it should be added there, too.

Markus

Markus Heidelberg wrote:

Thank you Markus, I'll have a look at this too !

On Thu, 29 Jan 2009, Zabre wrote:

You may want to consider whether those dates make most sense as the date of the commit, or the date the changes were done; git tracks both of these separately, in part because it's easy to have some work done at one time, and only make the commit that becomes part of the official project history much later (and these may be done by different people).

The date for the changes being done is set with GIT_AUTHOR_DATE

	-Daniel
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Daniel Barkalow wrote:

Thank you Daniel, this is very interesting, having a GIT_COMMITTER_DATE and a GIT_AUTHOR_DATE enables me to have both dates, and no need to trick the system then.

For the record, this thread is similar to : http://n2.nabble.com/Committing-with-past-date--td795326.html