Creating a commit on behalf of an organization

You can create commits on behalf of an organization by adding a trailer to the commit's message. Commits attributed to an organization include an on-behalf-of badge on GitHub.

In this article

To create commits on behalf of an organization:

  • You must be a member of the organization indicated in the trailer
  • You must sign the commit
  • Your commit email and the organization email must be in a domain verified by the organization
  • Your commit message must end with the commit trailer on-behalf-of: @org <name@organization.com>
    • org is the organization's login
    • name@organization.com is in the organization's domain

Organizations can use the name@organization.com email as a public point of contact for open source efforts.

Creating commits with an on-behalf-of badge on the command line

  1. Type your commit message and a short, meaningful description of your changes. After your commit description, instead of a closing quotation, add two empty lines.

    $ git commit -m "Refactor usability tests.
>
>

    Tip: If you're using a text editor on the command line to type your commit message, ensure there are two newlines between the end of your commit description and the on-behalf-of: commit trailer.

  2. On the next line of the commit message, type on-behalf-of: @org <name@organization.com>, then a closing quotation mark.

    $ git commit -m "Refactor usability tests.
>
>
on-behalf-of: @ORG NAME@ORGANIZATION.COM"

The new commit, message, and badge will appear on GitHub the next time you push. For more information, see "Pushing commits to a remote repository."

Creating commits with an on-behalf-of badge on GitHub

After you've made changes in a file using the web editor on GitHub, you can create a commit on behalf of your organization by adding an on-behalf-of: trailer to the commit's message.

  1. Click Commit changes...
  2. In the "Commit message" field, type a short, meaningful commit message that describes the changes you made.
  3. In the text box below your commit message, add on-behalf-of: @org <name@organization.com>.
  4. Click Commit changes or Propose changes.

The new commit, message, and badge will appear on GitHub.

Further reading