git-blame-someone-else

rewrite the author and committer of a commit

TLDR

Reassign a commit to another author

$ git blame-someone-else "[Author Name] <[email protected]>" [commit]

Reassign the most recent commit

$ git blame-someone-else "[Name] <[email protected]>" HEAD

Reassign a commit by hash

$ git blame-someone-else "[Name] <[email protected]>" [abc123]

SYNOPSIS

git blame-someone-else author commit

git blame-someone-else rewrites a commit so that it appears to have been made by someone else. It is a standalone script by Jay Phelps, written as a joke, and is not part of git-extras or core git.Mechanically it uses git filter-branch with GIT_AUTHOR_NAME, GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL, GIT_COMMITTER_NAME and GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL overridden for the target commit, then rewrites every commit from that point forward. Both the author and the committer are changed, not just the author.The one defensible use is repairing your own attribution: commits made with a misconfigured user.email, or from a shared machine, where the recorded identity is simply wrong.

PARAMETERS

author

New identity, in "Name <email>" format.

commit

The commit to rewrite.

INSTALL

sudo apt install git

sudo dnf install git

sudo pacman -S git

sudo apk add git

sudo zypper install git

brew install git

nix profile install nixpkgs#git

CAVEATS

This is a joke tool, and its author says so explicitly, along with a request not to run it against a production repository and complain if it eats everything. Treat it accordingly.It rewrites history. Every commit from the target onwards gets a new hash, so anyone who has already pulled the old commits will have a diverging history, and publishing the result needs a force push. Never run it on a shared branch.It changes the committer as well as the author, so it does not merely correct attribution, it erases the record of who actually made the commit.Attributing work to a real person who did not write it is dishonest, and on a repository you do not own it may violate the project's contribution terms. Signed commits do not survive: the rewrite invalidates any GPG signature, which is one of the few technical defences against exactly this.Correcting your own identity does not need this tool. git commit --amend --author="Name <email>" fixes the most recent commit, and git rebase -i with --reset-author handles older ones with less collateral damage.

HISTORY

git blame-someone-else was written by Jay Phelps in 2016 as a joke. Its README quotes an endorsement from Linus Torvalds, which is itself a fabricated commit produced by the tool to demonstrate that it works.

RESOURCES

Source code