Change the date of a git commit

Hugo Di Francesco - Aug 29 '18 - - Dev Community

One of the greatest and worst things with git is that you can rewrite the history. Here’s a sneaky way of abusing that, I can’t think of a legitimate reason to do this.

As with anything, thanks StackOverflow for all the options I can pick from 👍.

Set the date of the last commit to the current date

GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="$(date)" git commit --amend --no-edit --date "$(date)"
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Set the date of the last commit to an arbitrary date

GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="Mon 20 Aug 2018 20:19:19 BST" git commit --amend --no-edit --date "Mon 20 Aug 2018 20:19:19 BST"
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Set the date of an arbitrary commit to an arbitrary or current date

Rebase to before said commit and stop for amendment:

  1. git rebase <commit-hash>^ -i
  2. Replace pick with e (edit) on the line with that commit (the first one)
  3. quit the editor (ESC followed by :wq in VIM)
  4. Either:
    • GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="$(date)" git commit --amend --no-edit --date "$(date)"
    • GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="Mon 20 Aug 2018 20:19:19 BST" git commit --amend --no-edit --date "Mon 20 Aug 2018 20:19:19 BST"

See here for more information around rebasing and editing in git: Split an existing git commit.

Sean Mungur

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .