Re: commit --amend --author error

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 12:24:18PM +0100, Michael J Gruber wrote:

Gunnar Wagner schrieb am 13.01.2015 um 09:15:

quoted

I got APGL licensed code from someone else and want to post it on my 
github (without taking credit for the work)

tried   git commit --amend --author="Author name, www.website.com" but 
got an error message which said something like "original author not found"
Can it be that the --amen --author only work if the author is on github 
himself?

This has nothing to do with github.

The author has be in the form "authorname <authoremail>". The important
parts for the format are the <>.

Yes, but the error message is a hint that there is something else going
on. When there are no angle brackets, some DWIM magic kicks in: git
tries to find a matching author by walking the project history from
HEAD. So you can do (in git.git):

  $ git commit --allow-empty -m foo --author=gruber
  [detached HEAD 73ef08b] foo
   Author: Michael J Gruber [off-list ref]

Of course that does not work if you do not already have commits from the
person in your repository:

  $ git commit --allow-empty -m foo --author=foobar
  fatal: No existing author found with 'foobar'

-Peff