Re: modifying commit's author

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

"J. Bruce Fields" [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

If I got the author wrong on a commit, is there a quick way to fix it
(e.g. by passing the right arguments or environment variables to commit
--amend)?

I usually do "format-patch -$n; reset --hard HEAD~$n; edit
00??-*.patch; am 00??-*.patch" myself when I got into that
situation to rebuild the branch, and haven't personally felt
need for an option to --amend, but it might make sense to teach
git-commit --amend to allow --author option to override it; I
think it currently ignores --author when given without erroring
out.

It may become a question if we would want to allow updating the
timestamp as well, but when people asked for --author I did not
hear from anybody who wanted to have --authortime, so not being
able to do so probably is Ok.

Untested, but something along this line.

-- >8 --
[PATCH] honor --author even with --amend, -C, and -c.

Earlier code discarded GIT_AUTHOR_DATE taken from the base
commit when --author was specified.  This was often wrong as
that use is likely to fix the spelling of author's name.

---

diff --git a/git-commit.sh b/git-commit.sh
index e23918c..6f4dcdb 100755
--- a/git-commit.sh
+++ b/git-commit.sh

@@ -462,15 +462,7 @@ if test -f "$GIT_DIR/MERGE_HEAD" && test -z "$no_edit"; then
 fi >>"$GIT_DIR"/COMMIT_EDITMSG
 
 # Author
-if test '' != "$force_author"
-then
-	GIT_AUTHOR_NAME=`expr "z$force_author" : 'z\(.*[^ ]\) *<.*'` &&
-	GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL=`expr "z$force_author" : '.*\(<.*\)'` &&
-	test '' != "$GIT_AUTHOR_NAME" &&
-	test '' != "$GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL" ||
-	die "malformed --author parameter"
-	export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL
-elif test '' != "$use_commit"
+if test '' != "$use_commit"
 then
 	pick_author_script='
 	/^author /{

@@ -501,6 +493,15 @@ then
 	export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL
 	export GIT_AUTHOR_DATE
 fi
+if test '' != "$force_author"
+then
+	GIT_AUTHOR_NAME=`expr "z$force_author" : 'z\(.*[^ ]\) *<.*'` &&
+	GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL=`expr "z$force_author" : '.*\(<.*\)'` &&
+	test '' != "$GIT_AUTHOR_NAME" &&
+	test '' != "$GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL" ||
+	die "malformed --author parameter"
+	export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL
+fi
 
 PARENTS="-p HEAD"
 if test -z "$initial_commit"