commit.txt: clarify how --author argument is used
commit --author was added by 146ea06 (git commit --author=$name: look $name up in existing commits), but its documentation was sorely lacking compared to its excellent commit message. This commit tries to improve the documentation. Signed-off-by: Jay Soffian <jaysoffian@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Jay Soffian committed
Jun 6, 2010 at 19:31 UTC
3334729cf29605389b51effc1f311656f3fd8086
1 file changed
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Documentation/git-commit.txt
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@@ -95,10 +95,11 @@ OPTIONS
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read the message from the standard input.
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--author=<author>::
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- Override the author name used in the commit. You can use the
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- standard `A U Thor <author@example.com>` format. Otherwise,
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- an existing commit that matches the given string and its author
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- name is used.
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+ Override the commit author. Specify an explicit author using the
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+ standard `A U Thor <author@example.com>` format. Otherwise <author>
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+ is assumed to be a pattern and is used to search for an existing
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+ commit by that author (i.e. rev-list --all -i --author=<author>);
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+ the commit author is then copied from the first such commit found.
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--date=<date>::
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Override the author date used in the commit.