[macOS] ERROR: GNU date is required. #178

AndreF010203 · 2025-01-02T11:05:16Z

AndreF010203
Jan 2, 2025

Hello!
Premise, I'm not too familiar with Unix environments.
I'm on MacOs, installed via homebrew.
when executing git-quick-stat I get the error: ERROR: GNU date is required.

My etc/path/:
$HOMEBREW_PREFIX/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin

~/.zprofile:
export PATH="$HOMEBREW_PREFIX/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

while if I try the command gdate in the terminal it works.
What am I missing?
thanks in advance

tomice · 2025-01-02T16:57:26Z

tomice
Jan 2, 2025
Maintainer

Hi there! What happens if you add the following after your export PATH statement in your ~/.zprofile:

alias date="gdate"

Once you add that line, source ~/.zprofile again, and run date --version to test it. If that works and shows a GNU version of date, then try running git-quick-stats again.

Edit from the future: two quick things to note:

The alias will only work with an interactive shell, so this is not the correct solution.
Try adding the export PATH statement to the ~/.zshrc instead, and that should fix it.

7 replies

sandstrom Jun 12, 2025

It's zsh and I've tested in both .zshenv and .zshrc. Though I read somewhere that alias doesn't work in non-interactive, and also tried with a function (https://alexanderzeitler.com/articles/using-aliases-in-zsh-scripts/) but still cannot get it to work.

I'll just abort now, but thanks for helping out! 😄

tomice Jun 12, 2025
Maintainer

Unfortunately, I can't seem to replicate this issue on my M1 MacBook Air. However, I am thinking it is related to your environment where the GNU version of date is not properly getting passed to the subshell where git-quick-stats is running. You are 100% correct that my earlier mention of that alias only works for interactive mode and not non-interactive mode, so in your case, that is not a solution at all. In practice, you shouldn't need that, though.

This is what I am seeing with the default zsh shell, though. I have to manually setup everything since I don't use zsh much. If you follow these commands by copying and pasting them, does it still have the issue? This is assuming the Homebrew path is the same between my installation and yours, of course. I tried to add comments showing what I'm doing:

# Verifying I am using zsh
tomice@MacBookAir ~ % echo $0            
-zsh

# Verifying I am using the BSD date
tomice@MacBookAir ~ % date --version
date: illegal option -- -
usage: date [-jnRu] [-I[date|hours|minutes|seconds|ns]] [-f input_fmt]
            [ -z output_zone ] [-r filename|seconds] [-v[+|-]val[y|m|w|d|H|M|S]]
            [[[[mm]dd]HH]MM[[cc]yy][.SS] | new_date] [+output_fmt]

# Setting up my path and verifying the new GNU date
tomice@MacBookAir ~ % export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH" 
tomice@MacBookAir ~ % date --version
date (GNU coreutils) 9.5
Copyright (C) 2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by David MacKenzie.

# Verifying the path for GNU date
tomice@MacBookAir ~ % command -v date
/opt/homebrew/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin/date

# Grab the latest git-quick-stats to test
tomice@MacBookAir ~ % git clone https://github.com/arzzen/git-quick-stats
tomice@MacBookAir ~ % cd git-quick-stats 
tomice@MacBookAir git-quick-stats % ls -l
total 368
-rw-r--r--  1 tomice  staff  56039 Sep 28  2024 daily_stats.csv
-rw-r--r--  1 tomice  staff    839 Jun 12 17:20 Dockerfile
-rw-r--r--  1 tomice  staff  45126 Sep 28  2024 git_log.json
-rwxr-xr-x  1 tomice  staff  46328 Jun 12 17:20 git-quick-stats
-rw-r--r--  1 tomice  staff   3740 Sep 19  2024 git-quick-stats.1
-rw-r--r--  1 tomice  staff   1075 Jun 12 17:20 LICENSE
-rw-r--r--  1 tomice  staff    940 Aug 24  2024 Makefile
-rw-r--r--  1 tomice  staff  13983 Jun 12 17:20 README.md
drwxr-xr-x  5 tomice  staff    160 Sep 19  2024 tests

# Verifying I am on the master branch with the latest commit
tomice@MacBookAir git-quick-stats % git branch
* master

tomice@MacBookAir git-quick-stats % git log -1
commit d1641f7bf3d6e4df0281b68b3f32da3d36627fb4 (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD)
Merge: 8de8c43 b0003be
Author: arzzen <arzzen@users.noreply.github.com>
Date:   Sun Jun 8 19:33:43 2025 +0200

    Merge pull request #181 from jwilk-forks/anchor-regexps
    
    Anchor regexps in commitsPerAuthor() 

# Using your exact command here, but doing it inside git-quick-stats itself
tomice@MacBookAir git-quick-stats % _GIT_SINCE="2024-06-01" ./git-quick-stats --commits-by-author-by-hour
Which author? Tom Ice
Git commits by hour for author 'Tom Ice':

	hour	sum
	00	0	|
	01	0	|
	02	0	|
	03	0	|
	04	0	|
	05	0	|
	06	0	|
	07	0	|
	08	0	|
	09	0	|
	10	0	|
	11	0	|
	12	0	|
	13	0	|
	14	0	|
	15	0	|
	16	0	|
	17	0	|
	18	0	|
	19	0	|
	20	2	|█████████████████████████████████████████████████████
	21	0	|
	22	0	|
	23	1	|██████████████████████████

sandstrom Jun 13, 2025

Thanks!!

It works if I export manually in the shell before running the command (export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"). Putting the export into ~/.zshenv doesn't work.

I guess something is messed up on my end 😄

tomice Jun 13, 2025
Maintainer

Try adding export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH" to your ~/.zshrc. Re-source your zsh terminal (or quit the Terminal app and open a brand new instance) after doing this. I think that'll solve this issue for you, and you won't have to run that line every time you want to run this utility. You can confirm by seeing if date --version works or doing command -v date.

If you don't want to have to add lines like that to your configuration files for your shell scripts, and you're okay with launching with Python, you can maybe consider the analogous port we also maintain: https://github.com/git-quick-stats/git-py-stats

sandstrom Jun 16, 2025

Thanks!

MatthewSteeples · 2025-07-24T23:34:56Z

MatthewSteeples
Jul 24, 2025

I'm getting the same error when trying to run the Docker container

Q:\Core [matthew/PRIdentityRights ≡ +27 ~44 -1 !]> docker run --rm -it -v ${pwd}:/git arzzen/git-quick-stats
ERROR: GNU date is required.
If you're on macOS, please install it using 'brew install coreutils'.
Ensure that your PATH is configured to use GNU date as well.
See the README.md for further details.

1 reply

tomice Jul 26, 2025
Maintainer

This looks different. It looks like you're in PowerShell or something on a Windows machine, not on macOS.

Try add coreutils after util-linux but before the \ in the Dockerfile on line 7. Does that fix this issue? https://github.com/git-quick-stats/git-quick-stats/blob/master/Dockerfile#L7

[macOS] ERROR: GNU date is required. #178

Uh oh!

AndreF010203 Jan 2, 2025

Replies: 2 comments · 8 replies

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

tomice Jan 2, 2025 Maintainer

Uh oh!

sandstrom Jun 12, 2025

Uh oh!

tomice Jun 12, 2025 Maintainer

Uh oh!

sandstrom Jun 13, 2025

Uh oh!

tomice Jun 13, 2025 Maintainer

Uh oh!

sandstrom Jun 16, 2025

Uh oh!

MatthewSteeples Jul 24, 2025

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

tomice Jul 26, 2025 Maintainer

AndreF010203
Jan 2, 2025

Replies: 2 comments 8 replies

tomice
Jan 2, 2025
Maintainer

tomice Jun 12, 2025
Maintainer

tomice Jun 13, 2025
Maintainer

MatthewSteeples
Jul 24, 2025

tomice Jul 26, 2025
Maintainer