GIT commit as different user without email / or only email

I'm trying to commit some changes as a different user, but i do not have a valid email address, following command is not working for me:

git commit --author="john doe" -m "some fix"
fatal: No existing author found with 'john doe'

I have the same problem when trying to commit with only an email address

git commit --author="john@doe.com" -m "some fix"
fatal: No existing author found with '[email protected]'

On the GIT man pages for the commit command it says i can use the

standard A U Thor <author@example.com> format

For the --author option.

Where is this format defined ? what does A and U stand for ? how do i commit for a different user with only a username or only an email?

The minimal required author format, as hinted to in this SO answer, is

Name <email>

In your case, this means you want to write

git commit --author="Name <email>" -m "whatever"

Per Willem D'Haeseleer's comment, if you don't have an email address, you can use <>:

git commit --author="Name <>" -m "whatever"

As written on the git commit man page that you linked to, if you supply anything less than that, it's used as a search token to search through previous commits, looking for other commits by that author.

The specific format is:

git commit --author="John Doe <[email protected]>" -m "Impersonation is evil." 

The

> standard A U Thor <[email protected]> format

Seems to be defined as followed: ( as far as i know, with absolutely no warranty )

A U Thor = required username

• The separation of the characters probably indicates that spaces are allowed, it could also be resembling initials.
• The username has to be followed by 1 space, extra spaces will be truncated

<[email protected]> = optional email address

• Must always be between < > signs.
• The email address format isn't validated, you can pretty much enter whatever you want
• Optional, you can omit this explicitly by using <>

If you don't use this exact syntax, git will search through the existing commits and use the first commit that contains your provided string.

Examples:

1. Only user name

   Omit the email address explicitly:

    git commit --author="John Doe <>" -m "Impersonation is evil."
   

2. Only email

   Technically this isn't possible. You can however enter the email address as the username and explicitly omit the email address. This doesn't seem like it's very useful. I think it would make even more sense to extract the user name from the email address and then use that as the username. But if you have to:

    git commit --author="[email protected] <>" -m "Impersonation is evil." 
   

I ran in to this when trying to convert a repository from mercurial to git. I tested the commands on msysgit 1.7.10.

The --author option doesn't do the right thing for the purpose of not leaking information between your git personalities: It doesn't bypass reading the invoking user's configuration:

*** Please tell me who you are.

Run

  git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
  git config --global user.name "Your Name"

This does:

git -c user.name='A U Thor' -c [email protected] commit

---

For the purpose of separating work- and private git personalities, Git 2.13 supports directory specific configuration: You no longer need to wrap git and hack this yourself to get that.

Just supplement：

> git commit --author="[email protected] " -m "Impersonation is evil."

In some cases the commit still fails and shows you the following message:

> *** Please tell me who you are.

> Run

> git config --global user.email "[email protected]" > git config --global user.name "Your Name"

> to set your account's default identity. > Omit --global to set the identity only in this repository.

> fatal: unable to auto-detect email address (got xxxx)

So just run "git config", then "git commit"

Format

A U Thor <author@example.com>

simply mean that you should specify

FirstName MiddleName LastName <email@example.com>

Looks like middle and last names are optional (maybe the part before email doesn't have a strict format at all). Try, for example, this:

git commit --author="John <[email protected]>" -m "some fix"

As the docs say:

  --author=<author>
       Override the commit author. Specify an explicit author using the standard 
       A U Thor <author@example.com> format. Otherwise <author> is assumed to 
       be a pattern and is used to search for an existing commit by that author 
       (i.e. rev-list --all -i --author=<author>); the commit author is then copied 
       from the first such commit found.

if you don't use this format, git treats provided string as a pattern and tries to find matching name among the authors of other commits.

Open Git Bash.

Set a Git username:

$ git config --global user.name "name family" Confirm that you have set the Git username correctly:

$ git config --global user.name > name family

Set a Git email:

$ git config --global user.email [email protected] Confirm that you have set the Git email correctly:

$ git config --global user.email > [email protected]

An alternative if the concern is to hide the real email address...If you are committing to Github you don't need a real email you can use <username>@users.noreply.github.com

Regardless of using Github or not, you probably first want change your committer details (on windows use SET GIT_...)

GIT_COMMITTER_NAME='username' 
GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL='[email protected]'

Then set the author

git commit --author="username <[email protected]>"

https://help.github.com/articles/keeping-your-email-address-private

It is all dependent on how you commit.

For example:

git commit -am "Some message"

will use your ~\.gitconfig username. In other words, if you open that file you should see a line that looks like this:

[user]
    email = [email protected]

That would be the email you want to change. If your doing a pull request through Bitbucket or Github etc. you would be whoever you're logged in as.

git -c "user.name={{ name }}" -c "user.email={{ email }}" commit -m "{{ message }}"

where {{ }} indicates YOU put the value