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[Bug] Stacked PR squash merges can combine the PR author's name with the merger's email

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#371 5 comments 22 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
30/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
git, github
Domain
cli

Research direction

No source file, test, or entry point is identified. Start by comparing the linked pull requests with their generated squash commits and determine whether gh-stack has a relevant merge path; done should mean the mixed author identity is reproducibly explained and a concrete project-scoped change is defined.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

bug topic: merge commit

Description

When a native GitHub Stacked PR is squash-merged by someone other than the PR author, the generated commit can contain a mixed author identity:

  • The Git author name belongs to the PR author.
  • The Git author email belongs to the user who merged the stack.

The original commits are correctly associated with the PR author. The incorrect email is introduced when GitHub creates the squashed commit.

As a result, the repository page may display the PR author's name while the API, contribution graph, contributor statistics, and other author-based tooling attribute the commit to the merger.

Public examples

Dominant language
Go
Stars
1.5k
Forks
73
Avg merge
1d 8h
Merged PRs (30d)
7

Contributor guide

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First steps

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  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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