How to modify existing, unpushed commits?

Question

I wrote the wrong thing in a commit message. Alternatively, I've forgotten to include some files.

How can I change the commit message/files? The commit has not been pushed yet.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

---

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 3

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 <filepattern>

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.

Answer 4

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 5

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.

Answer 6

You can use git-rebase-reword

It is designed to edit any commit (not just last) same way as commit --amend

$ git rebase-reword <commit-or-refname>

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^