How do I make a Git commit in the past?

user_227259 0
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I'm converting everything over to Git for my own personal use and I found some old versions of a file already in the repository. How do I commit it to the history in the correct order according the file's "date modified" so I have an accurate history of the file?

I was told something like this would work:

git filter-branch --env-filter="GIT_AUTHOR_DATE=... --index-filter "git commit path/to/file --date " --tag-name-filter cat -- --all
git-commit repository version-control git
13 Answers

To make a commit that looks like it was done in the past you have to set both GIT_AUTHOR_DATE and GIT_COMMITTER_DATE:

GIT_AUTHOR_DATE=$(date -d'...') GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="$GIT_AUTHOR_DATE" git commit -m '...'

where date -d'...' can be exact date like 2019-01-01 12:00:00 or relative like 5 months ago 24 days ago.

To see both dates in git log use:

git log --pretty=fuller

This also works for merge commits:

GIT_AUTHOR_DATE=$(date -d'...') GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="$GIT_AUTHOR_DATE" git merge <branchname> --no-ff
user_4467920

This is an old question but I recently stumbled upon it.

git commit --date='year-month-day hour:minutes:seconds' -m "message"

So it would look something like this: git commit --date='2021-01-01 12:12:00' -m "message" worked properly and verified it on GitHub and GitLab.

user_76661240

In my case over time I had saved a bunch of versions of myfile as myfile_bak, myfile_old, myfile_2010, backups/myfile etc. I wanted to put myfile's history in git using their modification dates. So rename the oldest to myfile, git add myfile, then git commit --date=(modification date from ls -l) myfile, rename next oldest to myfile, another git commit with --date, repeat...

To automate this somewhat, you can use shell-foo to get the modification time of the file. I started with ls -l and cut, but stat(1) is more direct 

git commit --date="`stat -c %y myfile`" myfile

user_11621950
user_17089600
  1. git --date changes only GIT_AUTHOR_DATE but many git apps, e.g., GitHub shows GIT_COMMITTER_DATE. Make sure to change GIT_COMMITTER_DATE too.
  2. git does not aware time zone in default UNIX date output. Make sure to format the datetime format in a compatible format such as ISO8601.

Complete example in OS X (Change both GIT_COMMITTER_DATE and GIT_AUTHOR_DATE to 4 hours ago):

x=$(date -v -4H +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z); export GIT_COMMITTER_DATE=$x; git commit --amend --date $x
user_12714120

Pre-Step.

  • Pull all data from the remote to the local repository.

  • we are using the --amend and --date switches.

The exact command is as follows:

$ git commit --amend --date="YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS"

user_89282440

The simple answer you are looking for:

GIT_AUTHOR_DATE="2020-10-24T18:00:00 +0200" GIT_COMMITTER_DATE=$GIT_AUTHOR_DATE git commit

Mind the timezone string and set a proper one for your timezone. i.e. +0200, -0400

user_49256610
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