IntelliJ IDEA - Asterisk after author's name in git log

Intellij IdeaGit CommitJetbrains Ide

Intellij Idea Problem Overview

In our git log we sometimes see an asterisk after the user name in the Author column. The same user is listed without the asterisk in other commits.

What does the asterisk stand for?

I'm using IntelliJ IDEA 15.0.6.

Intellij Idea Solutions

Solution 1 - Intellij Idea

Every change in GIT (and in the most of modern VCS's) has an author and a committer. The Log shows an author because we respect authorship even if the author of changes doesn't have access to the repo or isn't able to commit code by himself.

Asterisk on the author's name in the Log means that this commit was created by the described person, but was applied by someone else.

Here is an illustration of how it looks: enter image description here

There are some common cases when this happens:

  • you cherrypicked someone else's commit
  • you rebased branch with someone else's commits
  • you applied .patch file mailed to you by someone else
  • you merged the pull-request via GitHub UI - GitHub does it with its own user but leaves authorship to you.

Solution 2 - Intellij Idea

It indicates that commit is the most recent commit to modify the file.

> Annotations for lines modified in the current revision, are marked with bold type and an asterisk.

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/investigate-changes.html#annotate

Solution 3 - Intellij Idea

That (the asterisk) is usually when another user has rebased the commits of the original author. You can confirm this in the message window on the lower right. It will show you the original author along with "committed by" with the name of the user who did the rebase.

Solution 4 - Intellij Idea

As described in the source provided by @CrazyCoder the asterisk indicates that the branch was created by a different user.

Solution 5 - Intellij Idea

I think it signifies a commit issue. I see it in my company's codebase in what I believe is a missed merge. I see it with a Git log --graph command as well as in Intellij. This isn't suppose to happen, but it appears that there are two remote branches, BA and BB, both from the master.

  1. Developer Alice checks out remote branch BA.
  2. Developer Bob checks out remote branch BB and merges in changes in the master branch.
  3. Alice updates, commits, and pushes her local BA to the remote BA.
  4. Alice makes a pull request to get her change in the master branch.
  5. Meanwhile, Bob has committed and pushed his changes to BB.
  6. Merge master Meg performs the pull.

So BB, which Bob committed after Meg merged Alice's change to BA, does not contain the changes. In other words, BB is based on the pre-BA changes. Git is smart enough to see the problem and alert you with this obscure, seemingly undocumented feature.

I'm a n00b when it comes to Git, so I may be wrong. Look for commit issues with the asterisked commit.

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Attributions

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Content TypeOriginal AuthorOriginal Content on Stackoverflow
QuestionFeinesFabiView Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Intellij IdeaDenis KurochkinView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Intellij IdeaJeff PuckettView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Intellij IdeaAbbas GadhiaView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Intellij IdeaFeinesFabiView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Intellij IdeaSteve GelmanView Answer on Stackoverflow