How to merge branch and retain the authorship

Question

let's say that my colleage John has created a branch called 'john'. It has 10 committs by John. When it comes to merging back to master they ask me to do merging.

This is what I do

git checkout -b john origin/john
git rebase master
git checkout master
git merge john --squashed
git add .
git commit -m 'merged branch john'

However now what happens is that it is my id against the merged commit. And later people come asking me why did I change certain part of code.

How do I collapse all the comitts in john branch into one commit such that John is the author. I guess git commit interactive can help but could not quite understand.

Answer 1

The issue here is that git merge --squash will apply the same changes as a normal merge, but without retaining the merge information. Then, when you commit, it's the same as any commit you make: it's attributed to you. You could change the commit's author information using git commit --author="Original Author <email@server>". See git-commit(1) for more information on the --author switch.

But the question I have is: why are you squashing the merge? Why not just do a non-squashed merge? If anyone does a git blame, it will be appropriately attributed to the commit by the original author.

Answer 2

You can also --amend the authorship afterwards if you already did the merge. like that:

git checkout master
git merge my_branch
git commit --amend --author="My Nick <[email protected]>"
git push origin master

This works as desired and adds the specified author to the merge commit. Simple as that.