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Last active February 11, 2023 18:46
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Anonymise Git history
#!/bin/sh
# Suppose you want to do blind reviewing of code (eg for job interview
# purposes). Unfortunately, the candidates' names and email addresses are
# stored on every commit! You probably want to assess each candidate's version
# control practices, so just `rm -rf .git` throws away too much information.
# Here's what you can do instead.
# Rewrite all commits to hide the author's name and email
for branch in `ls .git/refs/heads`; do
# We may be doing multiple rewrites, so we must force subsequent ones.
# We're throwing away the backups anyway.
git filter-branch -f --env-filter '
export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="Anonymous Candidate"
export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="anon@example.com"' $branch
done
# Delete the old commits
rm -rf .git/refs/original/
# Delete remotes, which might point to the old commits
for r in `git remote`; do git remote rm $r; done
# Your old commits will now no longer show up in GitK, `git log` or `git
# reflog`, but can still be found using `git show $commit-id`.
@ece-acar
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Thank you for this command. GIT_COMMITTER_NAME and GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL are two more variables you need to clear.

@ttatanepvp123
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ttatanepvp123 commented Jun 9, 2019

in some cases, it is not completely anonymous
example:
if I do a git pull after committing, the commit title will be "Merge branch 'master' of https://github.com/username/repository"

@afucher
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afucher commented Oct 13, 2019

the repository name still appears if I made a git clone when trying a 'git reflog'
This can solve the issue:

git reflog expire --expire=90.days.ago --expire-unreachable=now --all

@ThomDietrich
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ThomDietrich commented Jan 12, 2021

Publishing a summarized version:

#!/bin/sh

# Suppose you want to do blind reviewing of code (eg for job interview
# purposes). Unfortunately, the candidates' names and email addresses are
# stored on every commit! You probably want to assess each candidate's version
# control practices, so just `rm -rf .git` throws away too much information.
# Here's what you can do instead.

# Rewrite all commits to hide the author's name and email
for branch in `ls .git/refs/heads`; do
    # We may be doing multiple rewrites, so we must force subsequent ones.
    # We're throwing away the backups anyway.
    git filter-branch -f --env-filter '
        export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="Anonymous Candidate"
        export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="anon@example.com"
        export GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="Anonymous Candidate"
        export GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="anon@example.com"
    ' $branch
done

# Delete the old commits
rm -rf .git/refs/original/

# Delete remotes, which might point to the old commits
for r in `git remote`; do git remote rm $r; done

# Delete references
git reflog expire --expire=90.days.ago --expire-unreachable=now --all

# Your old commits will now no longer show up in GitK, `git log` or `git
# reflog`, but can still be found using `git show $commit-id`.

# Be aware that merge commit messages often include URLs hinting the original author

@franz-ka
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franz-ka commented Feb 19, 2021

Almost perfect! But this script doesnt anonimize commits on tags! For that you have to replace the whole for git filter-branch loop with something like https://github.com/adamdehaven/change-git-author/blob/master/changeauthor.sh#L536, that is:
git filter-branch -f --env-filter '... exports ...' --tag-name-filter cat -- --branches --tags

Now yes!

(correction script taken from https://www.adamdehaven.com/blog/update-commit-history-author-information-for-git-repository/#instructions)

@xcambar
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xcambar commented Mar 18, 2021

To cleanup the merge commit messages, I've used:

for branch in `ls .git/refs/heads`; do
  git filter-branch -f --msg-filter 'sed "s/Merge pull request.*$/Merge pull request #xxx from anonymous_repo/g"' $branch
done

@ahbanavi
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Also be aware of merge branch commits, sometimes branch names includes people usernames:

for branch in `ls .git/refs/heads`; do
  git filter-branch -f --msg-filter 'sed "s/Merge branch.*$/Merge branch anon into anon/g"' $branch
done

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