I'm seeing this on this GitHub repository:
What does this mean? How can something be "authored 7 days ago", and yet "committed 14 hours ago"?
GitHub – Meaning of ‘Authored 7 Days Ago; Committed 14 Hours Ago’
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Related Solutions
Your wish is their new feature
If the commit is not on the default branch, the indicator will show the branches which contain the commit. If the commit is part of an unmerged pull request, a link will be shown.
Once the commit makes it to the default branch, any tags that contain the commit will be shown, and the default branch will be the only branch listed.
It's just for fun. It's much the same as if you vote my answer up 100 times and I get a badge. If you could do that, I'll let you know if that or the gold star gives more virtual satisfaction.
The advantage is more for GitHub, it's a very clever way of reducing support requests down to the absolute minimum text. If the same were applied to answers on this site, I'd not have added the attempt at humour which adds nothing to my answer.
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Best Answer
Git has a separate concept of the author (the person who wrote the code) and committer (the person who committed it to the repository). Similarly there can be different dates for both. They are usually the same.
You'd want them to be different primarily if the person writing the code or submitting the patch does not have push access to the repository as in projects which use mailing lists for patch submissions. In this case, the person with push access would apply the patch and run
git commitwith either the--authorand--dateswitches or using the GIT_AUTHOR_NAME, GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL and GIT_AUTHOR_DATE environment variables (documented in git-commit-tree.The other case is using
git cherry-pickor git rebase. The committer is the person doing the the cherry pick, and the author is the author of the original commit. Git will handle setting the author identity and date for you.You can see this information in the repository with
git log --pretty=fuller.