git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: Looks like --amend create commit... don't understand

From
Mmat <matthieu.stigler@gmail.com>
Date
Feb 25, 2010, 20:45 UTC
Message-ID
<4B86E152.1060108@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To
<vpqr5oa9tu5.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>
Dear Matthieu

Thanks a lot for your patient help and clear explanations, it is now much clearer for me!

Merci!
Matthieu
Matthieu Moy a écrit :
Show 66 quoted lines
> mat <matthieu.stigler@gmail.com> writes:
>
>   
>> commits. But when looking on gitk, I see that
>> git commit blabla --amend
>>
>> does create each and every time a new commit,
>>     
>
> Yes. In Git, objects (including commits) are fundamentally immutable.
> You never modify an object, you create a new one, and usually forget
> about the old one.
>
>   
>> I mean: with git log,
>> there is only one commit, but on gitk, I see many, with the same name
>> but different revision ID....
>>     
>
> The revision ID is the sha1sum of the commit content. So, if they have
> different contents, they _must_ have different IDs.
>
> What happens is that you start with a history like
>
> A---B <- master
>
> and then try to --amend B. What happens is that you create a new B,
> say B', and let the branch you sit on point to this new one. Like:
>
> A---B
>  \
>   `-B' <- master
>
> Most of the time, B has just become unreachable: no branch contain it,
> no tag point to it, ... so you actually see
>
> A---B' <- master
>
> and it very much looks like you just modified B.
>
> Now, if you made B reachable before your commit --amend, like by
> pushing it to another repo, letting someone else pull from it, or if B
> is already part of another branch, then the situation is different.
>
> For example, if B is already part of a branch, like this:
>
>     .---- temp-branch
>     v
> A---B---C <- master
>
> If you do a checkout of temp-branch, then commit --amend, you end up
> in this situation :
>
> A---B---C <- master
>  \
>   `-B' <- temp-branch
>
> The solutions:
>
> * If you already published your commit, then don't amend it. Period.
>
> * If you want to rewrite an old commit in a branch, then read about
>   "git rebase -i", but make sure you read all the warnings about
>   rebase before you do so.
>
>   
Previous: Matthieu MoyNext: Octavio Alvarez
Message 3 of 4 in “Looks like --amend create commit... don't understand”
  1. matFeb 24, 2010
  2. Matthieu MoyFeb 24, 2010
  3. matFeb 25, 2010
  4. Octavio AlvarezFeb 25, 2010

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.