How to modify existing, unpushed commit messages?

Answer 1

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 <commit hash> 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!)

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

If the commit you want to fix isn’t the most recent one:

1. git rebase --interactive $parent_of_flawed_commit

   If you want to fix several flawed commits, pass the parent of the oldest one of them.

2. An editor will come up, with a list of all commits since the one you gave.

   1. Change pick to reword (or on old versions of Git, to edit) in front of any commits you want to fix.
   2. Once you save, Git will replay the listed commits.
      
      

3. 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:

   1. Change the commit in any way you like.
   2. git commit --amend
   3. 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.

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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?

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

I prefer this way:

git commit --amend -c <commit ID>

Otherwise, there will be a new commit with a new commit ID.

Answer 6

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"