Replacing Committer Name and Email on Commits - blitterated/docker-dev-env GitHub Wiki

Have you ever made a series of commits and forgot to change git's local config for your name and email?

Here we'll take a look at how to replace commits with the wrong name and email associated with them.

Tools

Install pipx with brew

brew install pipx

Install git-filter-repo with pipx

pipx install git-filter-repo

Operation

Create a directory to work in and jump into it

This directory will be used to clone a repository into as well as to hold the mailmap file we'll use to remap the user and email address.

mkdir ~/fix-emails && cd $_

Create a mailmap file in the work directory

If you try to do this in the repo itself, you get the following warning:

this does not look like a fresh clone.
  (you have untracked changes)
Please operate on a fresh clone instead.  If you want to proceed
anyway, use --force.

The syntax is gitmailmerge.

Proper Name <[email protected]> Commit Name <[email protected]>

Or another way to look at the syntax:

Name-to-change-to <[email protected]> Name-currently-on-commits <[email protected]>

Now create the mailmerge file.

cat > mailmap <<EOF
blitterated <[email protected]> Real Name <[email protected]>
EOF

Pull down a fresh clone of your repo and cd into it

git clone [email protected]:blitterated/some-repo.git
cd some-repo

Run git-filter-repo

git filter-repo --mailmap ../mailmap

Check the results

git log

or tig if you've got it installed

tig

Change the commiter name and email for this repo

git config user.name "blitterated"
git config user.email "[email protected]"

Push

Add the remote repo

git remote add origin ghblit:blitterated/some-repo.git

Push to remote

git push -u --force origin master

Pull and rebase in other local clones

git pull --rebase