Re: changing log entries

On Wednesday 2006 December 13 23:08, Jon Masters wrote:

If it's HEAD you want to change:
 git-commit --amend

If it's not, it's a bit harder. You could pull each commit out as a patch and apply them again later after a git-reset. However, git has a tool for automating a lot of that: git-rebase. man git-rebase has some excellent examples.

 * -- A -- B -- C (master)

Let's say you want to edit A; make a new branch at A:

$ git branch temp-edit-branch master^^
 
 * -- A (temp-edit-branch)
       \
        B -- C (master)

Edit A with git-commit --amend. This makes a new A, A' that has the new commit message:

 * -- A' (temp-edit-branch)
  \
   A -- B -- C (master)

Then you switch to "master" and rebase master onto temp-edit-branch; you can then delete temp-edit-branch

$ git-checkout master $ git-rebase temp-edit-branch $ git branch -D temp-edit-branch

 * -- A' -- B' -- C' (master)
  \
   A -- B -- C

Note that A-B-C are now dangling commits; a git-prune would be needed to clean them out of the repository.

The important thing to realise is that you can never really edit a commit. The best you can do is reapply it. In this example, the fact that B' makes the same change as B is irrelevant - they are two separate commits.

Note: this is only workable if you haven't pushed this branch to another 
repository.  The other repository would retain the original A--B--C branch 
and you will get "won't fast forward" errors if you try to push the 
new "A'--B'--C'" branch.

Andy