adamdehaven / change-git-author

Update the commit history of your git repository to resolve incorrect author information.

Change Git Author

This action is destructive to your repository's history. If you're collaborating on a repository with others, it's considered bad practice to rewrite published history.

You should only do this in an emergency.

Running this script rewrites history for all repository collaborators. After completing these steps, any person with forks or clones must fetch the rewritten history and rebase any local changes into the rewritten history.

Usage

1. Download the script from GitHub and save it to an easily-accessible directory on your computer.

2. Change the permissions of the script file to allow it to execute:

   chmod +x /path/to/changeauthor.sh

3. Navigate into the repository with the incorrect commit history

   cd path/to/repo

   Alternatively, you can run from anywhere by passing the --git-dir and --work-tree flags.

4. Run the script (with or without flags)

   ./changeauthor.sh [OPTIONS]...

   If you did not change the permissions to allow execution, you can also call the script with either of the following:

   bash ./changeauthor.sh [OPTIONS]...
   
   sh ./changeauthor.sh [OPTIONS]...

   If you run the script with no option flags, you will be prompted for the needed values via interactive prompts. The script will then proceed to update your local repository and push the changes to the specified remote.

---

If you would like to suppress the git-filter-branch warning, simply add the following line the ~/.bashrc file on your computer:

export FILTER_BRANCH_SQUELCH_WARNING=1

If you prefer to set up the script as a function you can call from anywhere, add the following function to your ~/.bashrc file:

function changegitauthor() {
  # Update the path to point to the absolute path of the script on your computer
  bash /c/absolute/path/to/change-git-author/changeauthor.sh "$@"
}

Options

You may pass options (as flags) directly to the script, or pass nothing to run the script in interactive mode.

old-email

• Usage: -o, --old-email
• Example: [email protected]

The old/incorrect email address of the author you would like to replace in the commit history.

new-email

• Usage: -e, --new-email
• Example: [email protected]

The new/corrected email address to replace in commits matching the old-email address.

new-name

• Usage: -n, --new-name
• Example: Marty McFly

The new/corrected name for the new commit author info. (Be sure to enclose name in quotes)

remote

• Usage: -r, --remote
• Default: origin
• Example: github

The name of the repository remote you would like to alter.

force

• Usage: -f, --force

Allows the script to run successfully in a non-interactive shell (assuming all required flags are set), bypassing the confirmation prompt.

If you do not pass a value to the --remote flag when using --force, the default remote (origin) will be used.

WARNING

By passing the --force flag (along with all other required flags), there is no turning back. > Once you start the script, the process will start and can severely damage your repository if used incorrectly.

git-dir

• Usage: -d, --git-dir

Set the path to the repository (".git" directory) if it differs from the current directory. It can be an absolute path or relative path to current working directory.

This option should be used in conjunction with the --work-tree flag.

work-tree

• Usage: -w, --work-tree

Set the path to the working tree. It can be an absolute path or a path relative to the current working directory.

help

• Usage: -h, -?, --help

Show the help content.

version

• Usage: -v, -V, --version

Show version information.

change-git-author's Issues

Unable to run on OSX

This is really nice but it doesn't seem to work for me? I'm on the latest OSX version using bash locally for my shell. Nothing fancy going on.

However when I run the script I see a couple different errors depending on how I choose to run it. I'm not a bash expert so I may be overlooking something here. 😁

I confirmed it's marked as executable

repo on  master [$?] via ⬢ v10.18.1 
❯ ls -l
total 1104
-rw-r--r--     1 cbzehner  staff    2514 Nov 10 21:19 README.md
-rwxr-xr-x     1 cbzehner  staff   17805 Nov 10 22:04 changeauthor.sh

Just trying to run it as expected

repo on  master [$?] via ⬢ v10.18.1 
❯ ./changeauthor.sh -o [email protected] -e [email protected]
: No such file or directory

Calling it with bash directly gives a different error

repo on  master [$?] via ⬢ v10.18.1 took 2s 
❯ bash changeauthor.sh 
: command not foundne 2: 
: command not foundne 9: 
: command not foundne 11: 
: command not foundne 24: 
: command not foundne 31: 
: command not foundne 34: 
: command not foundne 36: 
'hangeauthor.sh: line 43: syntax error near unexpected token `in
'hangeauthor.sh: line 43: `  case "$1" in

You are my hero!! 🥇

Thank you! ❤️

Your script is amazing! works flawlessly!

Change user name only

I my case I had to change the user name while keeping the same email address.
Thus, I have commented the lines checking [ "$USER_OLD_EMAIL" == "$USER_NEW_EMAIL" ] and everything has been successfully renamed. 👍

I think, in interactive mode, the script should warn and ask the user if the intention is actually to change the user name while keeping the same email address.

A command line argument may also be added for that case where only one email address is requested.

Showing 2 timelines in GitHub network graph

Hey, Thanks for creating this useful tool.
I recently used it and saw that it creates new network graph and the old one still persists.
Here is a link to my GitHub repo.
Is there any workaround for this?

The push is being rejected by the master

The push here is being getting rejected by the remote.

giving me this error

integer expression expected

test on 5.1.8 and 3.2.57 of Bash
foo unset
/bin/bash -c '[ "$foo" -eq 0 ]' will cause the error
work if change -eq to =

Repository must have a remote setup to run

Just a quick note for your consideration. I ran changeauthor.sh against a local git repository without any remotes set up and it exited early at the VALID_REMOTES check.

I just commented out that section and proceeded as planned, but I want to bring this up in case you haven't encountered this case before.

change author with space in e-mail

Hello,

first thank you for your script, it fixed some e-mail problemes in my git repo.

But i have one commiter e-mail with a space in it.
e.g. Name @example.com.
If i set the old-email to Name @example.com he takes only Name.
If i set Name\ @example.com he takes the space, but i think the check fails.
USER_OLD_EMAIL_EXISTS="$(git ${USER_GIT_DIR} ${USER_WORK_TREE} log --pretty=format:"%ae" | grep -wxi ${USER_OLD_EMAIL})"