How to modify existing unpushed commit messages

Question

I wrote the wrong thing in a commit message   How can I change the message  The commit has not been pushed yet

User · Answer

If it s your last commit  just amend the commit   git commit --amend -o -m  New commit message     Using the -o  --only  flag to make sure you change only the commit message     If it s a buried commit  use the awesome interactive rebase   git rebase -i   9     Show the last 9 commits in a text editor   Find the commit you want  change pick to r  reword   and save and close the file  Done       Miniature Vim tutorial  or  how to rebase with only 8 keystrokes 3jcwrEscZZ     Run vimtutor if you have time hjkl correspond to movement keys      All commands can be prefixed with a  range   e g  3j moves down three lines i to enter insert mode     text you type will appear in the file Esc or Ctrlc to exit insert mode and return to  normal  mode u to undo Ctrlr to redo dd  dw  dl to delete a line  word  or letter  respectively cc  cw  cl to change a line  word  or letter  respectively  same as ddi  yy  yw  yl to copy   yank   a line  word  or letter  respectively p or P to paste after  or before current position  respectively  wEnter to save  write  a file  q Enter to quit without saving  wqEnter or ZZ to save and quit   If you edit text a lot  then switch to the Dvorak keyboard layout  learn to touch-type  and learn Vim  Is it worth the effort  Yes       ProTip     Don t be afraid to experiment with  dangerous  commands that rewrite history      Git doesn t delete your commits for 90 days by default  you can find them in the reflog     git reset   3     Go back three commits   git reflog c4f708b HEAD  0   reset  moving to   3 2c52489 HEAD  1   commit  more changes 4a5246d HEAD  2   commit  make important changes e8571e4 HEAD  3   commit  make some changes     earlier commits       git reset 2c52489     and you re back where you started     Watch out for options like --hard and --force though     they can discard data     Also  don t rewrite history on any branches you re collaborating on

User · Answer

If you are using the Git GUI  you can amend the last commit which hasn t been pushed with     Commit Amend Last Commit

User · Answer

If the commit you want to fix isn   t the most recent one    git rebase --interactive  parent of flawed commit  If you want to fix several flawed commits  pass the parent of the oldest one of them  An editor will come up  with a list of all commits since the one you gave    Change pick to reword  or on old versions of Git  to edit  in front of any commits you want to fix  Once you save  Git will replay the listed commits     For each commit you want to reword  Git will drop you back into your editor  For each commit you want to edit  Git drops you into the shell  If you   re in the shell    Change the commit in any way you like  git commit --amend git rebase --continue    Most of this sequence will be explained to you by the output of the various commands as you go  It   s very easy  you don   t need to memorise it     just remember that git rebase --interactive lets you correct commits no matter how long ago they were     Note that you will not want to change commits that you have already pushed  Or maybe you do  but in that case you will have to take great care to communicate with everyone who may have pulled your commits and done work on top of them  How do I recover resynchronise after someone pushes a rebase or a reset to a published branch

User · Answer

For anyone looking for a Windows Mac GUI to help with editing older messages  i e  not just the latest message   I d recommend Sourcetree  The steps to follow are below the image   For commits that haven t been pushed to a remote yet   Make sure you ve committed or stashed all current changes  i e   so there are no files listed in the  quot File Status quot  tab  - it won t work otherwise  In the  quot Log   History quot  tab  right click on the entry with an adjoining line in the graph one below the commit s  you wish to edit and select  quot Rebase children of  lt commit ref gt  interactively    quot  Select the whole row for a commit message you wish to change  click on the  quot Message quot  column   Click the  quot Edit Message quot  button  Edit the message as desired in the dialog that comes up and then click OK  Repeat steps 3-4 if there are other commit messages to change  Click OK  Rebasing will commence  If all is well  the output will end  quot Completed successfully quot   NOTE  I ve sometimes seen this fail with Unable to create  project path  git index lock   File exists  when trying to modify multiple commit messages at the same time  Not sure exactly what the issue is  or whether it will be fixed in a future version of Sourcetree  but if this happens would recommend rebasing them one at a time  slower but seems more reliable       Or    for commits that have already been pushed  Follow the steps in this answer  which are similar to above  but require a further command to be run from the command line  git push origin  lt branch gt  -f  to force-push the branch  I d recommend reading it all and applying the necessary caution

User · Answer

To amend the previous commit  make the changes you want and stage those changes  and then run    git commit --amend   This will open a file in your text editor representing your new commit message  It starts out populated with the text from your old commit message  Change the commit message as you want  then save the file and quit your editor to finish   To amend the previous commit and keep the same log message  run  git commit --amend -C HEAD   To fix the previous commit by removing it entirely  run  git reset --hard HEAD    If you want to edit more than one commit message  run  git rebase -i HEAD commit count   Replace commit count with number of commits that you want to edit   This command launches your editor  Mark the first commit  the one that you want to change  as    edit    instead of    pick     then save and exit your editor  Make the change you want to commit and then run  git commit --amend git rebase --continue   Note  You can also  Make the change you want  from the editor opened by git commit --amend

User · Answer

For anyone looking for a Windows Mac GUI to help with editing older messages  i e  not just the latest message   I d recommend Sourcetree  The steps to follow are below the image   For commits that haven t been pushed to a remote yet   Make sure you ve committed or stashed all current changes  i e   so there are no files listed in the  quot File Status quot  tab  - it won t work otherwise  In the  quot Log   History quot  tab  right click on the entry with an adjoining line in the graph one below the commit s  you wish to edit and select  quot Rebase children of  lt commit ref gt  interactively    quot  Select the whole row for a commit message you wish to change  click on the  quot Message quot  column   Click the  quot Edit Message quot  button  Edit the message as desired in the dialog that comes up and then click OK  Repeat steps 3-4 if there are other commit messages to change  Click OK  Rebasing will commence  If all is well  the output will end  quot Completed successfully quot   NOTE  I ve sometimes seen this fail with Unable to create  project path  git index lock   File exists  when trying to modify multiple commit messages at the same time  Not sure exactly what the issue is  or whether it will be fixed in a future version of Sourcetree  but if this happens would recommend rebasing them one at a time  slower but seems more reliable       Or    for commits that have already been pushed  Follow the steps in this answer  which are similar to above  but require a further command to be run from the command line  git push origin  lt branch gt  -f  to force-push the branch  I d recommend reading it all and applying the necessary caution

User · Answer

I prefer this way   git commit --amend -c  lt commit ID gt    Otherwise  there will be a new commit with a new commit ID

User · Answer

I prefer this way   git commit --amend -c  lt commit ID gt    Otherwise  there will be a new commit with a new commit ID

User · Answer

Update your last wrong commit message with the new commit message in one line   git commit --amend -m  your new commit message    Or  try Git reset like below     You can reset your head to n number of commit   NOT a good idea for changing last commit message    but you can get an idea to split commit into multiple commits git reset --soft HEAD     It will reset you last commit  Now  you   can re-commit it with new commit message    Using reset to split commits into smaller commits  git reset can help you to break one commit into multiple commits too     Reset your head  I am resetting to last commits  git reset --soft HEAD     You can reset multiple commit by doing HEAD 2 no  of commits     Now  reset your head for splitting it to multiple commits git reset HEAD    Add and commit your files separately to make multiple commits  e g git add app  git commit -m  add all files in app directory   git add config  git commit -m  add all files in config directory    Here you have successfully broken your last commit into two commits

User · Answer

If you only want to change your last message you should use the --only flag or its shortcut -o with commit --amend   git commit --amend -o -m  New commit message    This ensures that you don t accidentally enhance your commit with staged stuff  Of course it s best to have a proper  EDITOR configuration  Then you can leave the -m option out  and Git will pre-fill the commit message with the old one  In this way it can be easily edited

User · Answer

If you only want to modify your last commit message  then do   git commit --amend    That will drop you into your text editor and let you change the last commit message    If you want to change the last three commit messages  or any of the commit messages up to that point  supply HEAD 3 to the git rebase -i command   git rebase -i HEAD 3

User · Answer

Amending the most recent commit message git commit --amend  will open your editor  allowing you to change the commit message of the most recent commit  Additionally  you can set the commit message directly in the command line with  git commit --amend -m  quot New commit message quot      however  this can make multi-line commit messages or small corrections more cumbersome to enter  Make sure you don t have any working copy changes staged before doing this or they will get committed too   Unstaged changes will not get committed   Changing the message of a commit that you ve already pushed to your remote branch If you ve already pushed your commit up to your remote branch  then - after amending your commit locally  as described above  - you ll also need to force push the commit with  git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt  --force   Or git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt  -f  Warning  force-pushing will overwrite the remote branch with the state of your local one  If there are commits on the remote branch that you don t have in your local branch  you will lose those commits  Warning  be cautious about amending commits that you have already shared with other people  Amending commits essentially rewrites them to have different SHA IDs  which poses a problem if other people have copies of the old commit that you ve rewritten  Anyone who has a copy of the old commit will need to synchronize their work with your newly re-written commit  which can sometimes be difficult  so make sure you coordinate with others when attempting to rewrite shared commit history  or just avoid rewriting shared commits altogether   Perform an interactive rebase Another option is to use interactive rebase  This allows you to edit any message you want to update even if it s not the latest message  In order to do a Git squash  follow these steps     n is the number of commits up to the last commit you want to be able to edit git rebase -i HEAD n  Once you squash your commits - choose the e r for editing the message   Important note about interactive rebase When you use git rebase -i HEAD n there can be more than n commits  Git will  quot collect quot  all the commits in the last n commits  and if there was a merge somewhere in between that range you will see all the commits as well  so the outcome will be n     Good tip  If you have to do it for more than a single branch and you might face conflicts when amending the content  set up git rerere and let Git resolve those conflicts automatically for you   Documentation  git-commit 1  Manual Page  git-rebase 1  Manual Page  git-push 1  Manual Page

User · Answer

To amend the previous commit  make the changes you want and stage those changes  and then run    git commit --amend   This will open a file in your text editor representing your new commit message  It starts out populated with the text from your old commit message  Change the commit message as you want  then save the file and quit your editor to finish   To amend the previous commit and keep the same log message  run  git commit --amend -C HEAD   To fix the previous commit by removing it entirely  run  git reset --hard HEAD    If you want to edit more than one commit message  run  git rebase -i HEAD commit count   Replace commit count with number of commits that you want to edit   This command launches your editor  Mark the first commit  the one that you want to change  as    edit    instead of    pick     then save and exit your editor  Make the change you want to commit and then run  git commit --amend git rebase --continue   Note  You can also  Make the change you want  from the editor opened by git commit --amend

User · Answer

If the commit you want to fix isn   t the most recent one    git rebase --interactive  parent of flawed commit  If you want to fix several flawed commits  pass the parent of the oldest one of them  An editor will come up  with a list of all commits since the one you gave    Change pick to reword  or on old versions of Git  to edit  in front of any commits you want to fix  Once you save  Git will replay the listed commits     For each commit you want to reword  Git will drop you back into your editor  For each commit you want to edit  Git drops you into the shell  If you   re in the shell    Change the commit in any way you like  git commit --amend git rebase --continue    Most of this sequence will be explained to you by the output of the various commands as you go  It   s very easy  you don   t need to memorise it     just remember that git rebase --interactive lets you correct commits no matter how long ago they were     Note that you will not want to change commits that you have already pushed  Or maybe you do  but in that case you will have to take great care to communicate with everyone who may have pulled your commits and done work on top of them  How do I recover resynchronise after someone pushes a rebase or a reset to a published branch

User · Answer

I use the Git GUI as much as I can  and that gives you the option to amend the last commit     Also  git rebase -i origin masteris a nice mantra that will always present you with the commits you have done on top of master  and give you the option to amend  delete  reorder or squash  No need to get hold of that hash first

User · Answer

If you are using the Git GUI tool  there is a button named Amend last commit  Click on that button and then it will display your last commit files and message  Just edit that message  and you can commit it with a new commit message   Or use this command from a console terminal   git commit -a --amend -m  My new commit message

User · Answer

I realised that I had pushed a commit with a typo in it  In order to undo  I did the following   git commit --amend -m  T-1000  advanced prototype  git push --force   Warning  force pushing your changes will overwrite the remote branch with your local one  Make sure that you aren t going to be overwriting anything that you want to keep  Also be cautious about force pushing an amended  rewritten  commit if anyone else shares the branch with you  because they ll need to rewrite their own history if they have the old copy of the commit that you ve just rewritten

User · Answer

As already mentioned  git commit --amend is the way to overwrite the last commit  One note  if you would like to also overwrite the files  the command would be   git commit -a --amend -m  My new commit message

User · Answer

Amend  You have a couple of options here  You can do  git commit --amend   as long as it s your last commit   Interactive rebase  Otherwise  if it s not your last commit  you can do an interactive rebase   git rebase -i  branched from   hash before commit    Then inside the interactive rebase you simply add edit to that commit  When it comes up  do a git commit --amend and modify the commit message  If you want to roll back before that commit point  you could also use git reflog and just delete that commit  Then you just do a git commit again

User · Answer

As already mentioned  git commit --amend is the way to overwrite the last commit  One note  if you would like to also overwrite the files  the command would be   git commit -a --amend -m  My new commit message

User · Answer

I like to use the following    git status git add --all git commit -am  message goes here about the change  git pull  lt origin master gt  git push  lt origin master gt

User · Answer

Use  git commit --amend   To understand it in detail  an excellent post is 4  Rewriting Git History  It also talks about when not to use git commit --amend

User · Answer

If you just want to edit the latest commit  use   git commit --amend   or  git commit --amend -m  one line message    But if you want to edit several commits in a row  you should use rebasing instead   git rebase -i  lt hash of one commit before the wrong commit gt      In a file  like the one above  write edit e or one of the other options  and hit save and exit   Now you ll be at the first wrong commit  Make changes in the files  and they ll be automatically staged for you  Type  git commit --amend   Save and exit that and type  git rebase --continue   to move to next selection until finished with all your selections   Note that these things change all your SHA hashes after that particular commit

User · Answer

If you are using the Git GUI tool  there is a button named Amend last commit  Click on that button and then it will display your last commit files and message  Just edit that message  and you can commit it with a new commit message   Or use this command from a console terminal   git commit -a --amend -m  My new commit message

User · Answer

Amending the most recent commit message git commit --amend  will open your editor  allowing you to change the commit message of the most recent commit  Additionally  you can set the commit message directly in the command line with  git commit --amend -m  quot New commit message quot      however  this can make multi-line commit messages or small corrections more cumbersome to enter  Make sure you don t have any working copy changes staged before doing this or they will get committed too   Unstaged changes will not get committed   Changing the message of a commit that you ve already pushed to your remote branch If you ve already pushed your commit up to your remote branch  then - after amending your commit locally  as described above  - you ll also need to force push the commit with  git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt  --force   Or git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt  -f  Warning  force-pushing will overwrite the remote branch with the state of your local one  If there are commits on the remote branch that you don t have in your local branch  you will lose those commits  Warning  be cautious about amending commits that you have already shared with other people  Amending commits essentially rewrites them to have different SHA IDs  which poses a problem if other people have copies of the old commit that you ve rewritten  Anyone who has a copy of the old commit will need to synchronize their work with your newly re-written commit  which can sometimes be difficult  so make sure you coordinate with others when attempting to rewrite shared commit history  or just avoid rewriting shared commits altogether   Perform an interactive rebase Another option is to use interactive rebase  This allows you to edit any message you want to update even if it s not the latest message  In order to do a Git squash  follow these steps     n is the number of commits up to the last commit you want to be able to edit git rebase -i HEAD n  Once you squash your commits - choose the e r for editing the message   Important note about interactive rebase When you use git rebase -i HEAD n there can be more than n commits  Git will  quot collect quot  all the commits in the last n commits  and if there was a merge somewhere in between that range you will see all the commits as well  so the outcome will be n     Good tip  If you have to do it for more than a single branch and you might face conflicts when amending the content  set up git rerere and let Git resolve those conflicts automatically for you   Documentation  git-commit 1  Manual Page  git-rebase 1  Manual Page  git-push 1  Manual Page

User · Answer

You also can use git filter-branch for that   git filter-branch -f --msg-filter  sed  s errror error     flawed commit  HEAD   It s not as easy as a trivial git commit --amend  but it s especially useful  if you already have some merges after your erroneous commit message   Note that this will try to rewrite every commit between HEAD and the flawed commit  so you should choose your msg-filter command very wisely  -

User · Answer

I realised that I had pushed a commit with a typo in it  In order to undo  I did the following   git commit --amend -m  T-1000  advanced prototype  git push --force   Warning  force pushing your changes will overwrite the remote branch with your local one  Make sure that you aren t going to be overwriting anything that you want to keep  Also be cautious about force pushing an amended  rewritten  commit if anyone else shares the branch with you  because they ll need to rewrite their own history if they have the old copy of the commit that you ve just rewritten

User · Answer

If the commit you want to fix isn   t the most recent one    git rebase --interactive  parent of flawed commit  If you want to fix several flawed commits  pass the parent of the oldest one of them  An editor will come up  with a list of all commits since the one you gave    Change pick to reword  or on old versions of Git  to edit  in front of any commits you want to fix  Once you save  Git will replay the listed commits     For each commit you want to reword  Git will drop you back into your editor  For each commit you want to edit  Git drops you into the shell  If you   re in the shell    Change the commit in any way you like  git commit --amend git rebase --continue    Most of this sequence will be explained to you by the output of the various commands as you go  It   s very easy  you don   t need to memorise it     just remember that git rebase --interactive lets you correct commits no matter how long ago they were     Note that you will not want to change commits that you have already pushed  Or maybe you do  but in that case you will have to take great care to communicate with everyone who may have pulled your commits and done work on top of them  How do I recover resynchronise after someone pushes a rebase or a reset to a published branch

User · Answer

If you are using the Git GUI  you can amend the last commit which hasn t been pushed with     Commit Amend Last Commit

User · Answer

If you only want to modify your last commit message  then do   git commit --amend    That will drop you into your text editor and let you change the last commit message    If you want to change the last three commit messages  or any of the commit messages up to that point  supply HEAD 3 to the git rebase -i command   git rebase -i HEAD 3

User · Answer

I have added the aliases reci and recm for recommit  amend  it  Now I can do it with git recm or git recm -m     vim    gitconfig   alias                  cm   commit     reci   commit --amend     recm   commit --amend

User · Answer

If you only want to change your last message you should use the --only flag or its shortcut -o with commit --amend   git commit --amend -o -m  New commit message    This ensures that you don t accidentally enhance your commit with staged stuff  Of course it s best to have a proper  EDITOR configuration  Then you can leave the -m option out  and Git will pre-fill the commit message with the old one  In this way it can be easily edited

User · Answer

You can use git-rebase-reword  It is designed to edit any commit  not just last  same way as commit --amend    git rebase-reword  lt commit-or-refname gt    It is named after the action on rebase interactive to amend a commit   reword   See this post and man -section interactive mode-  Examples     git rebase-reword b68f560   git rebase-reword HEAD

User · Answer

You can use git-rebase-reword  It is designed to edit any commit  not just last  same way as commit --amend    git rebase-reword  lt commit-or-refname gt    It is named after the action on rebase interactive to amend a commit   reword   See this post and man -section interactive mode-  Examples     git rebase-reword b68f560   git rebase-reword HEAD

User · Answer

Wow  so there are a lot of ways to do this   Yet another way to do this is to delete the last commit  but keep its changes so that you won t lose your work  You can then do another commit with the corrected message  This would look something like this   git reset --soft HEAD 1 git commit -m  New and corrected commit message    I always do this if I forget to add a file or do a change   Remember to specify --soft instead of --hard  otherwise you lose that commit entirely

User · Answer

On this question there are a lot of answers  but none of them explains in super detail how to change older commit messages using Vim  I was stuck trying to do this myself  so here I ll write down in detail how I did this especially for people who have no experience in Vim   I wanted to change my five latest commits that I already pushed to the server  This is quite  dangerous  because if someone else already pulled from this  you can mess things up by changing the commit messages  However  when you   re working on your own little branch and are sure no one pulled it you can change it like this   Let s say you want to change your five latest commits  and then you type this in the terminal   git rebase -i HEAD 5    Where 5 is the number of commit messages you want to change  so if you want to change the 10th to last commit  you type in 10    This command will get you into Vim there you can    edit    your commit history  You   ll see your last five commits at the top like this   pick  lt commit hash gt  commit message   Instead of pick you need to write reword  You can do this in Vim by typing in i  That makes you go in to insert mode   You see that you   re in insert mode by the word INSERT at the bottom   For the commits you want to change  type in reword instead of pick   Then you need to save and quit this screen  You do that by first going in to    command-mode    by pressing the Escbutton  you can check that you   re in command-mode if the word INSERT at the bottom has disappeared   Then you can type in a command by typing    The command to save and quit is wq  So if you type in  wq you   re on the right track   Then Vim will go over every commit message you want to reword  and here you can actually change the commit messages  You   ll do this by going into insert mode  changing the commit message  going into the command-mode  and save and quit  Do this five times and you   re out of Vim   Then  if you already pushed your wrong commits  you need to git push --force to overwrite them  Remember that git push --force is quite a dangerous thing to do  so make sure that no one pulled from the server since you pushed your wrong commits   Now you have changed your commit messages    As you see  I m not that experienced in Vim  so if I used the wrong  lingo  to explain what s happening  feel free to correct me

User · Answer

Use  git commit --amend   To understand it in detail  an excellent post is 4  Rewriting Git History  It also talks about when not to use git commit --amend

User · Answer

I have added the aliases reci and recm for recommit  amend  it  Now I can do it with git recm or git recm -m     vim    gitconfig   alias                  cm   commit     reci   commit --amend     recm   commit --amend

User · Answer

You can use Git rebasing  For example  if you want to modify back to commit bbc643cd  run    git rebase bbc643cd  --interactive   In the default editor  modify  pick  to  edit  in the line whose commit you want to modify  Make your changes and then stage them with    git add  lt filepattern gt    Now you can use    git commit --amend   to modify the commit  and after that    git rebase --continue   to return back to the previous head commit

User · Answer

I use the Git GUI as much as I can  and that gives you the option to amend the last commit     Also  git rebase -i origin masteris a nice mantra that will always present you with the commits you have done on top of master  and give you the option to amend  delete  reorder or squash  No need to get hold of that hash first

User · Answer

git commit --amend -m  your new message

User · Answer

If it s your last commit  just amend the commit   git commit --amend -o -m  New commit message     Using the -o  --only  flag to make sure you change only the commit message     If it s a buried commit  use the awesome interactive rebase   git rebase -i   9     Show the last 9 commits in a text editor   Find the commit you want  change pick to r  reword   and save and close the file  Done       Miniature Vim tutorial  or  how to rebase with only 8 keystrokes 3jcwrEscZZ     Run vimtutor if you have time hjkl correspond to movement keys      All commands can be prefixed with a  range   e g  3j moves down three lines i to enter insert mode     text you type will appear in the file Esc or Ctrlc to exit insert mode and return to  normal  mode u to undo Ctrlr to redo dd  dw  dl to delete a line  word  or letter  respectively cc  cw  cl to change a line  word  or letter  respectively  same as ddi  yy  yw  yl to copy   yank   a line  word  or letter  respectively p or P to paste after  or before current position  respectively  wEnter to save  write  a file  q Enter to quit without saving  wqEnter or ZZ to save and quit   If you edit text a lot  then switch to the Dvorak keyboard layout  learn to touch-type  and learn Vim  Is it worth the effort  Yes       ProTip     Don t be afraid to experiment with  dangerous  commands that rewrite history      Git doesn t delete your commits for 90 days by default  you can find them in the reflog     git reset   3     Go back three commits   git reflog c4f708b HEAD  0   reset  moving to   3 2c52489 HEAD  1   commit  more changes 4a5246d HEAD  2   commit  make important changes e8571e4 HEAD  3   commit  make some changes     earlier commits       git reset 2c52489     and you re back where you started     Watch out for options like --hard and --force though     they can discard data     Also  don t rewrite history on any branches you re collaborating on

User · Answer

git commit --amend -m  your new message

User · Answer

If you have to change an old commit message over multiple branches  i e   the commit with the erroneous message is present in multiple branches  you might want to use   git filter-branch -f --msg-filter    sed  s  lt old message gt   lt new message gt  g   -- --all   Git will create a temporary directory for rewriting and additionally backup old references in refs original     -f will enforce the execution of the operation  This is necessary if the temporary directory is already present or if there are already references stored under refs original  If that is not the case  you can drop this flag  -- separates filter-branch options from revision options  --all will make sure that all branches and tags are rewritten    Due to the backup of your old references  you can easily go back to the state before executing the command   Say  you want to recover your master and access it in branch old master   git checkout -b old master refs original refs heads master

User · Answer

If the commit you want to fix isn   t the most recent one    git rebase --interactive  parent of flawed commit  If you want to fix several flawed commits  pass the parent of the oldest one of them  An editor will come up  with a list of all commits since the one you gave    Change pick to reword  or on old versions of Git  to edit  in front of any commits you want to fix  Once you save  Git will replay the listed commits     For each commit you want to reword  Git will drop you back into your editor  For each commit you want to edit  Git drops you into the shell  If you   re in the shell    Change the commit in any way you like  git commit --amend git rebase --continue    Most of this sequence will be explained to you by the output of the various commands as you go  It   s very easy  you don   t need to memorise it     just remember that git rebase --interactive lets you correct commits no matter how long ago they were     Note that you will not want to change commits that you have already pushed  Or maybe you do  but in that case you will have to take great care to communicate with everyone who may have pulled your commits and done work on top of them  How do I recover resynchronise after someone pushes a rebase or a reset to a published branch

User · Answer

If you have not pushed the code to your remote branch  GitHub Bitbucket  you can change the commit message on the command line as below    git commit --amend -m  Your new message    If you re working on a specific branch do this   git commit --amend -m  BRANCH-NAME  new message    If you ve already pushed the code with the wrong message  and you need to be careful when changing the message  That is  after you change the commit message and try pushing it again  you end up with having issues  To make it smooth  follow these steps   Please read my entire answer before doing it   git commit --amend -m  BRANCH-NAME   your new message   git push -f origin BRANCH-NAME                  Not a best practice  Read below why    Important note  When you use the force push directly you might end up with code issues that other developers are working on the same branch  So to avoid those conflicts  you need to pull the code from your branch before making the force push    git commit --amend -m  BRANCH-NAME   your new message   git pull origin BRANCH-NAME  git push -f origin BRANCH-NAME   This is the best practice when changing the commit message  if it was already pushed

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I like to use the following    git status git add --all git commit -am  message goes here about the change  git pull  lt origin master gt  git push  lt origin master gt

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Amending the most recent commit message git commit --amend  will open your editor  allowing you to change the commit message of the most recent commit  Additionally  you can set the commit message directly in the command line with  git commit --amend -m  quot New commit message quot      however  this can make multi-line commit messages or small corrections more cumbersome to enter  Make sure you don t have any working copy changes staged before doing this or they will get committed too   Unstaged changes will not get committed   Changing the message of a commit that you ve already pushed to your remote branch If you ve already pushed your commit up to your remote branch  then - after amending your commit locally  as described above  - you ll also need to force push the commit with  git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt  --force   Or git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt  -f  Warning  force-pushing will overwrite the remote branch with the state of your local one  If there are commits on the remote branch that you don t have in your local branch  you will lose those commits  Warning  be cautious about amending commits that you have already shared with other people  Amending commits essentially rewrites them to have different SHA IDs  which poses a problem if other people have copies of the old commit that you ve rewritten  Anyone who has a copy of the old commit will need to synchronize their work with your newly re-written commit  which can sometimes be difficult  so make sure you coordinate with others when attempting to rewrite shared commit history  or just avoid rewriting shared commits altogether   Perform an interactive rebase Another option is to use interactive rebase  This allows you to edit any message you want to update even if it s not the latest message  In order to do a Git squash  follow these steps     n is the number of commits up to the last commit you want to be able to edit git rebase -i HEAD n  Once you squash your commits - choose the e r for editing the message   Important note about interactive rebase When you use git rebase -i HEAD n there can be more than n commits  Git will  quot collect quot  all the commits in the last n commits  and if there was a merge somewhere in between that range you will see all the commits as well  so the outcome will be n     Good tip  If you have to do it for more than a single branch and you might face conflicts when amending the content  set up git rerere and let Git resolve those conflicts automatically for you   Documentation  git-commit 1  Manual Page  git-rebase 1  Manual Page  git-push 1  Manual Page

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If you just want to edit the latest commit  use   git commit --amend   or  git commit --amend -m  one line message    But if you want to edit several commits in a row  you should use rebasing instead   git rebase -i  lt hash of one commit before the wrong commit gt      In a file  like the one above  write edit e or one of the other options  and hit save and exit   Now you ll be at the first wrong commit  Make changes in the files  and they ll be automatically staged for you  Type  git commit --amend   Save and exit that and type  git rebase --continue   to move to next selection until finished with all your selections   Note that these things change all your SHA hashes after that particular commit

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You can use Git rebasing  For example  if you want to modify back to commit bbc643cd  run    git rebase bbc643cd  --interactive   In the default editor  modify  pick  to  edit  in the line whose commit you want to modify  Make your changes and then stage them with    git add  lt filepattern gt    Now you can use    git commit --amend   to modify the commit  and after that    git rebase --continue   to return back to the previous head commit

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Amending the most recent commit message git commit --amend  will open your editor  allowing you to change the commit message of the most recent commit  Additionally  you can set the commit message directly in the command line with  git commit --amend -m  quot New commit message quot      however  this can make multi-line commit messages or small corrections more cumbersome to enter  Make sure you don t have any working copy changes staged before doing this or they will get committed too   Unstaged changes will not get committed   Changing the message of a commit that you ve already pushed to your remote branch If you ve already pushed your commit up to your remote branch  then - after amending your commit locally  as described above  - you ll also need to force push the commit with  git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt  --force   Or git push  lt remote gt   lt branch gt  -f  Warning  force-pushing will overwrite the remote branch with the state of your local one  If there are commits on the remote branch that you don t have in your local branch  you will lose those commits  Warning  be cautious about amending commits that you have already shared with other people  Amending commits essentially rewrites them to have different SHA IDs  which poses a problem if other people have copies of the old commit that you ve rewritten  Anyone who has a copy of the old commit will need to synchronize their work with your newly re-written commit  which can sometimes be difficult  so make sure you coordinate with others when attempting to rewrite shared commit history  or just avoid rewriting shared commits altogether   Perform an interactive rebase Another option is to use interactive rebase  This allows you to edit any message you want to update even if it s not the latest message  In order to do a Git squash  follow these steps     n is the number of commits up to the last commit you want to be able to edit git rebase -i HEAD n  Once you squash your commits - choose the e r for editing the message   Important note about interactive rebase When you use git rebase -i HEAD n there can be more than n commits  Git will  quot collect quot  all the commits in the last n commits  and if there was a merge somewhere in between that range you will see all the commits as well  so the outcome will be n     Good tip  If you have to do it for more than a single branch and you might face conflicts when amending the content  set up git rerere and let Git resolve those conflicts automatically for you   Documentation  git-commit 1  Manual Page  git-rebase 1  Manual Page  git-push 1  Manual Page

User · Answer

Wow  so there are a lot of ways to do this   Yet another way to do this is to delete the last commit  but keep its changes so that you won t lose your work  You can then do another commit with the corrected message  This would look something like this   git reset --soft HEAD 1 git commit -m  New and corrected commit message    I always do this if I forget to add a file or do a change   Remember to specify --soft instead of --hard  otherwise you lose that commit entirely

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Amend  You have a couple of options here  You can do  git commit --amend   as long as it s your last commit   Interactive rebase  Otherwise  if it s not your last commit  you can do an interactive rebase   git rebase -i  branched from   hash before commit    Then inside the interactive rebase you simply add edit to that commit  When it comes up  do a git commit --amend and modify the commit message  If you want to roll back before that commit point  you could also use git reflog and just delete that commit  Then you just do a git commit again

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Update your last wrong commit message with the new commit message in one line   git commit --amend -m  your new commit message    Or  try Git reset like below     You can reset your head to n number of commit   NOT a good idea for changing last commit message    but you can get an idea to split commit into multiple commits git reset --soft HEAD     It will reset you last commit  Now  you   can re-commit it with new commit message    Using reset to split commits into smaller commits  git reset can help you to break one commit into multiple commits too     Reset your head  I am resetting to last commits  git reset --soft HEAD     You can reset multiple commit by doing HEAD 2 no  of commits     Now  reset your head for splitting it to multiple commits git reset HEAD    Add and commit your files separately to make multiple commits  e g git add app  git commit -m  add all files in app directory   git add config  git commit -m  add all files in config directory    Here you have successfully broken your last commit into two commits

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If you have not pushed the code to your remote branch  GitHub Bitbucket  you can change the commit message on the command line as below    git commit --amend -m  Your new message    If you re working on a specific branch do this   git commit --amend -m  BRANCH-NAME  new message    If you ve already pushed the code with the wrong message  and you need to be careful when changing the message  That is  after you change the commit message and try pushing it again  you end up with having issues  To make it smooth  follow these steps   Please read my entire answer before doing it   git commit --amend -m  BRANCH-NAME   your new message   git push -f origin BRANCH-NAME                  Not a best practice  Read below why    Important note  When you use the force push directly you might end up with code issues that other developers are working on the same branch  So to avoid those conflicts  you need to pull the code from your branch before making the force push    git commit --amend -m  BRANCH-NAME   your new message   git pull origin BRANCH-NAME  git push -f origin BRANCH-NAME   This is the best practice when changing the commit message  if it was already pushed

User · Answer

If you have to change an old commit message over multiple branches  i e   the commit with the erroneous message is present in multiple branches  you might want to use   git filter-branch -f --msg-filter    sed  s  lt old message gt   lt new message gt  g   -- --all   Git will create a temporary directory for rewriting and additionally backup old references in refs original     -f will enforce the execution of the operation  This is necessary if the temporary directory is already present or if there are already references stored under refs original  If that is not the case  you can drop this flag  -- separates filter-branch options from revision options  --all will make sure that all branches and tags are rewritten    Due to the backup of your old references  you can easily go back to the state before executing the command   Say  you want to recover your master and access it in branch old master   git checkout -b old master refs original refs heads master

User · Answer

On this question there are a lot of answers  but none of them explains in super detail how to change older commit messages using Vim  I was stuck trying to do this myself  so here I ll write down in detail how I did this especially for people who have no experience in Vim   I wanted to change my five latest commits that I already pushed to the server  This is quite  dangerous  because if someone else already pulled from this  you can mess things up by changing the commit messages  However  when you   re working on your own little branch and are sure no one pulled it you can change it like this   Let s say you want to change your five latest commits  and then you type this in the terminal   git rebase -i HEAD 5    Where 5 is the number of commit messages you want to change  so if you want to change the 10th to last commit  you type in 10    This command will get you into Vim there you can    edit    your commit history  You   ll see your last five commits at the top like this   pick  lt commit hash gt  commit message   Instead of pick you need to write reword  You can do this in Vim by typing in i  That makes you go in to insert mode   You see that you   re in insert mode by the word INSERT at the bottom   For the commits you want to change  type in reword instead of pick   Then you need to save and quit this screen  You do that by first going in to    command-mode    by pressing the Escbutton  you can check that you   re in command-mode if the word INSERT at the bottom has disappeared   Then you can type in a command by typing    The command to save and quit is wq  So if you type in  wq you   re on the right track   Then Vim will go over every commit message you want to reword  and here you can actually change the commit messages  You   ll do this by going into insert mode  changing the commit message  going into the command-mode  and save and quit  Do this five times and you   re out of Vim   Then  if you already pushed your wrong commits  you need to git push --force to overwrite them  Remember that git push --force is quite a dangerous thing to do  so make sure that no one pulled from the server since you pushed your wrong commits   Now you have changed your commit messages    As you see  I m not that experienced in Vim  so if I used the wrong  lingo  to explain what s happening  feel free to correct me

User · Answer

You also can use git filter-branch for that   git filter-branch -f --msg-filter  sed  s errror error     flawed commit  HEAD   It s not as easy as a trivial git commit --amend  but it s especially useful  if you already have some merges after your erroneous commit message   Note that this will try to rewrite every commit between HEAD and the flawed commit  so you should choose your msg-filter command very wisely  -

[git] How to modify existing, unpushed commit messages?

Examples related to git

Examples related to git-commit

Examples related to git-rewrite-history

Examples related to git-amend