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Comments on How can I make --reset-author the default?

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How can I make --reset-author the default?

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I do a lot of rebasing and amending of my topic branches. I don't think it's especially useful for me or my colleagues to see in the logs what date it was when I first started working on the particular topic - only when I actually submitted it.

I know I can explicitly reset the date of my commit to the current time using git commit --amend --reset-author. But is there any way I can change that behaviour to be the default when I rebase or amend, so I don't have to type it every time?

For example: on Monday I put in a new feature and submit the patch for peer review. On Tuesday, my team lead wants me to make some changes to my patch and resubmit. On Wednesday I make the changes, git commit --amend them, and submit the new patch for review. On Thursday the new changes are approved. I pull the master branch and rebase my changes on it.

Right now, that commit entry in my log will still be timestamped Monday, even though I amended on Wednesday and rebased on Thursday. In the future, when we look through the logs, the useful date is when I've finished and push the change (Thursday), not the date of the first commit that no longer exists (Monday). To update the date, now on Thursday, I need to go a git commit --amend --reset-author --no-edit. If I don't do that, it will still say that my change was on a Monday, when it was not.

(Alternatively: am I missing something here? Is it actually useful for people to know that I started work on the topic on Monday, rather than that the change was actually put in on Thursday? Is there a way to see both the datestamp of a commit and the date the commit was actually added to the tree?)

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1 comment thread

General comments (8 comments)
General comments
Razetime‭ wrote about 4 years ago

what kind of functionality do you want? do you need the date to be constant?

Moshi‭ wrote about 4 years ago

Alternatively, the info is there and I don't believe it's getting in the way of anyone, so why bother removing it?

Hyperlynx‭ wrote about 4 years ago

@Moshi where is that info?

Moshi‭ wrote about 4 years ago

@Hyperlynx I'm not sure what you're asking - you asked how to remove that info right?

Hyperlynx‭ wrote about 4 years ago

@Moshi I'm not trying to remove the date, I'm trying to reset it to the current date. That's what --reset-author does. I want that behaviour by default, when I do a commit --amend or a squash. I mistakenly thought --date= also did that, when in fact it doesn't work at all.

Moshi‭ wrote about 4 years ago

@Hyperlynx remove, reset, you're still making the extra effort to get rid of the date information on past commits; I just don't understand why you bother - if it's not useful, no one will look at it anyway, so it shouldn't matter if it's the true date or not.

Hyperlynx‭ wrote about 4 years ago

@Moshi The date that I submit my final, cleaned-up, "good copy" commit, with its helpful commit message is what is useful. The past commits do not exist any more, they are scratch-pad workings out - the date of the first one of those is not useful.

Hyperlynx‭ wrote about 4 years ago

@Moshi or, if my patch is sitting in peer review, and minor changes are requested before I push, those changes are made by amending the proposed patch. Nobody wants or needs to see each tiny change in the log, they want to see the final version as one change. Without --reset-author, the date in the log will be the one of the first version I put up for review, not the latest, fully amended version.