I have made a git commit and subsequent push. I would like to change the commit message. If I understand correctly, this is not advisable because someone might have pulled from the remote repository before I make such changes. What if I know that no one has pulled?
Is there a way to do this?
If it is the most recent commit, you can simply do this:
git commit --amend
This brings up the editor with the last commit message and lets you edit the message. (You can use -m if you want to wipe out the old message and use a new one.)
And then when you push, do this:
git push --force-with-lease <repository> <branch>
Or you can use "+":
git push <repository> +<branch>
Or you can use --force:
git push --force <repository> <branch>
Be careful when using these commands.
If someone else pushed changes to the same branch, you probably want to avoid destroying those changes. The --force-with-lease option is the safest, because it will abort if there are any upstream changes (
If you don't specify the branch explicitly, Git will use the default push settings. If your default push setting is "matching", then you may destroy changes on several branches at the same time.
Anyone who already pulled will now get an error message, and they will need to update (assuming they aren't making any changes themselves) by doing something like this:
git fetch origin
git reset --hard origin/master # Loses local commits
Be careful when using reset --hard. If you have changes to the branch, those changes will be destroyed.
The destroyed data is really just the old commit message, but --force doesn't know that, and will happily delete other data too. So think of --force as "I want to destroy data, and I know for sure what data is being destroyed." But when the destroyed data is committed, you can often recover old commits from the reflog—the data is actually orphaned instead of destroyed (although orphaned commits are periodically deleted).
If you don't think you're destroying data, then stay away from --force... bad things might happen.
This is why --force-with-lease is somewhat safer.
Step1: git rebase -i HEAD~n to do interactive rebase for the last n commits affected. (i.e. if you want to change a commit message 3 commits back, do git rebase -i HEAD~3)
git will pop up an editor to handle those commits, notice this command:
# r, reword = use commit, but edit the commit message
that is exactly we need!
Step2: Change pick to r for those commits that you want to update the message. Don't bother changing the commit message here, it will be ignored. You'll do that on the next step. Save and close the editor.
Note that if you edit your rebase 'plan' yet it doesn't begin the process of letting you rename the files, run:
git rebase --continue
If you want to change the text editor used for the interactive session (e.g. from the default vi to nano), run:
GIT_EDITOR=nano git rebase -i HEAD~n
Step3: Git will pop up another editor for every revision you put r before. Update the commit msg as you like, then save and close the editor.
Step4: After all commits msgs are updated. you might want to do git push -f to update the remote.
It should be noted that if you use push --force with mutiple refs, they will ALL be modified as a result. Make sure to pay attention to where your git repo is configured to push to. Fortunately there is a way to safeguard the process slightly, by specifying a single branch to update. Read from the git man pages:
Note that --force applies to all the refs that are pushed, hence using it with push.default set to matching or with multiple push destinations configured with remote.*.push may overwrite refs other than the current branch (including local refs that are strictly behind their remote counterpart). To force a push to only one branch, use a + in front of the refspec to push (e.g git push origin +master to force a push to the master branch).
If you want to modify an older commit, not the last one, you will need to use rebase command as explained in here,Github help page , on the Amending the message of older or multiple commit messages section
Another option is to create an additional "errata commit" (and push) which references the commit object that contains the error -- the new errata commit also provides the correction. An errata commit is a commit with no substantive code changes but an important commit message -- for example, add one space character to your readme file and commit that change with the important commit message, or use the git option --allow-empty. It's certainly easier and safer than rebasing, it doesn't modify true history, and it keeps the branch tree clean (using amend is also a good choice if you are correcting the most recent commit, but an errata commit may be a good choice for older commits). This type of thing so rarely happens that simply documenting the mistake is good enough. In the future, if you need to search through a git log for a feature keyword, the original (erroneous) commit may not appear because the wrong keyword was used in that original commit (the original typo) -- however, the keyword will appear in the errata commit which will then point you to the original commit that had the typo. Here's an example:
$ git log
commit 0c28141c68adae276840f17ccd4766542c33cf1d
Author: First Last
Date: Wed Aug 8 15:55:52 2018 -0600
Errata commit:
This commit has no substantive code change.
This commit is provided only to document a correction to a previous commit message.
This pertains to commit object e083a7abd8deb5776cb304fa13731a4182a24be1
Original incorrect commit message:
Changed background color to red
Correction (*change highlighted*):
Changed background color to *blue*
commit 032d0ff0601bff79bdef3c6f0a02ebfa061c4ad4
Author: First Last
Date: Wed Aug 8 15:43:16 2018 -0600
Some interim commit message
commit e083a7abd8deb5776cb304fa13731a4182a24be1
Author: First Last
Date: Wed Aug 8 13:31:32 2018 -0600
Changed background color to red
This works for me pretty fine,
git checkout origin/branchname
if you're already in branch then it's better to do pull or rebase
git pull
or
git -c core.quotepath=false fetch origin --progress --prune
Later you can simply use
git commit --amend -m "Your message here"
or if you like to open text-editor then use
git commit --amend
I will prefer using text-editor if you have many comments. You can set your preferred text-editor with command
git config --global core.editor your_preffered_editor_here
Anyway, when your are done changing the commit message, save it and exit
and then run
git push --force
And you're done
additional information for same problem if you are using bitbucket pipeline
edit your message
git commit --amend
push to the sever
git push --force <repository> <branch>
then add --force to your push command on the pipeline
git ftp push --force
This will delete your previous commit(s) and push your current one.
remove the --force after first push
i tried it on bitbucket pipeline and its working fine
I'm a little bit new to Git, but I just wanna add my experience.
git commit --amend -m "New and correct message"
This worked great but the next was the problem for me. I already pushed the commit before changing the commit message. Finally, when I tried to push to the remote, it git threw an exception. So I should have pull down again before updating the remote branch.
git pull origin branch-name
git push origin branch-name
Hope my minor experience helps you. Thanks.
