Change git email for previous commits

Question

So I read a lot about how to change previous commit's email address but for some reason mine is not updating.

I did like 40 commits to my private repo with my local email (nameofMyComputer@kevin.local) which is bad since this email is not associated(and it can't be) with github.

I then remembered that I needed to set the git.config before and so I did:

 git config user.email "newemail@example.com"

and did a test commit and it worked perfectly.

Is there a way I can revert all my previous commits to this new email?

I read this question on SO Change the author and committer name and e-mail of multiple commits in Git and used this

 git filter-branch -f --env-filter "                         
                    GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL='kevin.cohen26@gmail.com'; 
                    GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL='kevin.cohen26@gmail.com';
                    " 
                HEAD

But it DID NOT work... I can still see the email of my previous commits with the .patch extension as the .local email address

Answer 1

You can indeed do his for many commits at once like this:

git rebase -i HEAD~40 -x "git commit --amend --author 'Author Name <author.name@mail.com>' --no-edit"

I worked this out better in this answer.

Answer 2

As you mentioned in your question (the link to the answer you found), this is the script indeed.

Note:

filter-branch is doing a rebase (will rewrite the history of the branch) which means that everyone who had a copy of the branch will have to delete and checkout it again.

---

The script origin is from here - Git-Tools-Rewriting-History:

# Loop over all the commits and use the --commit-filter
# to change only the email addresses

git filter-branch --commit-filter '

    # check to see if the committer (email is the desired one)
    if [ "$GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL" = "<Old Email>" ];
    then
            # Set the new desired name
            GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="<New Name>";
            GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="<New Name>";

            # Set the new desired email
            GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="<New Email>";
            GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="<New Email>";

            # (re) commit with the updated information
            git commit-tree "$@";
    else
            # No need to update so commit as is
            git commit-tree "$@";
    fi' 
HEAD

---

What does the script do?

Its looping over all your commits and once you find match its replacing the name and email of the committer.