fix(repo): collapse the stale commit identities to one canonical author - #263
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This repo is public and its history accumulated several author identities for one person: a personal address, an employer address, an unrelated venture's address, a malformed one with no TLD, and machine-local variants. Contributor views, blame and shortlog all showed them as different people, and two of them name organisations that have nothing to do with this project. A mailmap fixes attribution at read time without rewriting history. A rewrite would un-publish nothing -- the addresses are already in every existing clone and on GitHub -- while invalidating every outstanding worktree and PR. Uses the email-only form so it matches regardless of the name recorded on the commit; the name+email form missed several stragglers that used a different display name with the same address. Bot and agent identities are deliberately left distinct: they are separate actors, not spellings of the maintainer. Records the trap in the file itself: a mailmap resolves author and committer fields but does NOT edit Co-authored-by trailers, which is what a squash-merge writes. Checking those fields alone reports a clean repo while the address is still present in the message body.
forkwright
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Aug 15, 2026
🤖 I have created a release *beep* *boop* --- ## [1.6.1](v1.6.0...v1.6.1) (2026-08-15) ### Bug Fixes * **repo:** collapse the stale commit identities to one canonical author ([#263](#263)) ([8a47e08](8a47e08)) --- This PR was generated with [Release Please](https://github.com/googleapis/release-please). See [documentation](https://github.com/googleapis/release-please#release-please). Co-authored-by: github-actions[bot] <41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
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Finding
This repo is public and its history resolves to four author identities for one person, one of which names an unrelated venture:
forkwright <cody.kickertz@pm.me>forkwright <cody.kickertz@gmail.com>Cody Kickertz <cody.kickertz@gmail.com>admin <admin@ardentleatherworks.com>admin@ardentleatherworks.comandadmin@forkwright.devalso appear inCo-authored-by:trailers.Why a mailmap rather than a history rewrite
The addresses are already published in every clone and fork. A rewrite would un-publish nothing while invalidating every outstanding clone and PR. A mailmap corrects attribution at read time in
git log,git shortlog,git blameand GitHub's contributor views.Correction
Five mappings to one canonical identity, using the email-only form so each matches regardless of the display name recorded on the commit. Bot identities (
forge-bot,github-actions[bot],dependabot[bot]) are deliberately left distinct — separate actors, not spellings of the maintainer.Verified:
git log --all --use-mailmapcollapses 89 commits to one human author.One trap, recorded in the file
A mailmap resolves author and committer fields but does not edit
Co-authored-by:trailers, which is what a GitHub squash-merge writes. Checking%ae/%cealone reports a clean repo while the address is still in the message body.Done when:git shortlog -sne --alllists one human author.