GIT commit as different user without email / or only email

Question

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 'john@doe.com'

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?

*A U* doesn't stand for anything, it's just an example: *A U Thor* => *AUThor* => *Author*. You can specify anything you want as a name. — Samy Dindane, Jul 20 '12 at 12:56
I know that A U Thor forms Author, i was wondering if there was any significance in the separation. — Willem D'Haeseleer, Jul 20 '12 at 13:25
Related: [Can I specify multiple users for myself in .gitconfig?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4220416/can-i-specify-multiple-users-for-myself-in-gitconfig). — , May 19 '14 at 01:42

score 190 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

190

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.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

Community

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answered Jul 20 '12 at 12:48

eykanal

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Just found out that if you don't have an email address you can also just type "name <>" , to explicitly leave it blank instead of entering bogus. – Willem D'Haeseleer Jul 20 '12 at 13:29
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If you'd use `"name <>"`, and `git commit --amend` after, it will fail with `invalid ident` error; so just don't – sanmai Jun 16 '16 at 08:54
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Apparently even when using that option, you still need to have set user.email and user.name in your git config, otherwise git complains. – qwertzguy Dec 16 '16 at 01:07
How do I add a file as a different user for my first commit ? I will use the commit command after that. – MasterJoe Aug 07 '20 at 22:39

score 68 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 20 '12 at 12:45

68

The specific format is:

git commit --author="John Doe <john@doe.com>" -m "Impersonation is evil."

answered Jul 20 '12 at 12:45

pmr

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Why doesn't it require password of John Doe if you commit for his name? – Narek Mar 17 '15 at 06:28
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@Narek What would that be in this context? – pmr Mar 20 '15 at 00:28

score 43 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 19 '15 at 19:54

The

standard A U Thor <author@example.com> 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

<author@example.com> = 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:

Only user name

Omit the email address explicitly:

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

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="john@doe.com <>" -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.

user2394284 · Answer 4 · 2023-07-29T13:57:12.710

43

The --author option doesn't bypass reading the invoking user's personality:

*** Please tell me who you are.

Run

  git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
  git config --global user.name "Your Name"

This does:

git -c user.name='A U Thor' -c user.email=author@example.com commit

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

edited Jul 29 '23 at 13:57

answered Mar 28 '20 at 10:46

user2394284

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This is the only one that worked for me. Note the order is important. `git commit -c user.name="j bloggs" -am "message"` gives an error `fatal: Option -m cannot be combined with -c/-C/-F` – Martin Jul 10 '20 at 09:14
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@Martin Yes, because the ```-c``` flag pertains to the ```git``` command proper and not the ```commit``` subcommand (which btw has a different ```-c``` flag) – zerzevul Jan 05 '21 at 17:30
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This is the real answer. The rest suggesting --author are not helpful at all because user name and email are still required. – user7860670 Mar 09 '22 at 11:20

score 13 · Answer 5 · edited Oct 01 '17 at 07:50

13

Just supplement：

git commit --author="john@doe.com " -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 "you@example.com" 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"

edited Oct 01 '17 at 07:50

SymbolixAU

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answered Jun 14 '13 at 02:09

qinxian

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This is what I needed. I have separate username and email for a corporate GitHub and the public GitHub. I needed to set my current repo to use my public GitHub username and email so that I could push my changes without exposing a private email. – TBirkulosis Aug 21 '19 at 16:44

score 9 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 20 '12 at 12:46

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 <john@doe.com>" -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.

There's no such thing as *FirstName MiddleName LastName*. See [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11579311/git-commit-as-different-user-without-email-or-only-email#comment15320898_11579311). — Samy Dindane, Jul 20 '12 at 12:59

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Apr 22 '22 at 19:14

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

where {{ }} indicates YOU put the value

answered Apr 22 '22 at 19:14

Toskan

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score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 08 '19 at 14:40

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@foo.com Confirm that you have set the Git email correctly:

$ git config --global user.email

email@foo.com

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 25 '20 at 08:06

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 = someemail@gmail.com

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.

KCD · Answer 10 · 2020-02-29T19:12:34.820

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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='username@users.noreply.github.com'

Then set the author

git commit --author="username <username@users.noreply.github.com>"

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

edited Feb 29 '20 at 19:12

answered Aug 20 '14 at 02:49

KCD

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Unlike all of the other solutions, this works when you haven't initialized user.email/user.name initially. – Andy Feb 27 '20 at 19:46

GIT commit as different user without email / or only email

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