How To: Manage commits
related commands:
commit rebase reset
Until the history is published, you can modify commits. But you must never modify a published commit.
Modify the last commit
You forgot a file or a change in your last commit? It’s message has a error? Don’t panic, you can change that.
First, prepare a commit as always. Then, just add --amend to the commit command:
$ git commit --amend -m "message"
Now if you look the log, you will see that your old last commit is replaced by the new one. The new last commit contains all the old changes plus the new ones, and the new message.
You want to totally modify your last commit? Remove a file from it? You can do it too!
First, go back just before the last commit:
$ git reset --soft HEAD^
Now, prepare your new commit. Then, apply it:
$ git commit -m "message that explain the commit"
This way, you will keep the changes in file and you can remove file(s) content from a commit.
Modify an older commit / multiples commits
Usefull to clean up the history, you also can use this method to add a change to a previous commit.
First, find the hash of the commit to edit with git log or its alias git hist I proposed to you.
Then, go back in history before this commit with rebase (to keep changes through the nexts commits):
$ git rebase -i <hash>^
A prompt will be opened to able you to chose when rebase must stop to edit commits. It would look like this:
$ git rebase -i <hash>^
pick <hash> msg commit 1
pick a83dc4e msg commit 2
pick da0371b msg commit 3
pick b631630 msg commit 4
# Rebase 2248033..fee2037 into 2248033
#
# Commands:
# p, pick = use commit
# r, reword = use commit, but edit the commit message
# e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending
# s, squash = use commit, but meld into previous commit
# f, fixup = like "squash", but discard this commit's log message
# x, exec = run command (the rest of the line) using shell
#
# These lines can be re-ordered; they are executed from top to bottom.
#
# If you remove a line here THAT COMMIT WILL BE LOST.
#
# However, if you remove everything, the rebase will be aborted.
#
# Note that empty commits are commented out
On the top, replace pick by the command (probably edit) needed to modify the commit on the lines you want to change something in the commit.
Once you selected your commits, hit Ctrl + X, y and Return to start the rebase.
If you put an edit, the term would show you:
Stopped at
git commit --amend
Once you are satisfied with your changes, run
git rebase --continue
$
Now you can apply the modifications you learned in the first section of this post. When you create your new commit, continue the rebase with
$ git rebase --continue
The last --continue will display
$ git rebase --continue
Successfully rebased and updated refs/heads/master.
$
If something were wrong, you can cancel the process with:
$ git rebase --abort
To learn more about rebase interactive mode, see the Git Book.
Reminder
commit
Corrects the last unpushed commit.
$ git commit --ammend -m "<message>"
rebase
Apply commits from <branch> to current branch
$ git rebase <branch>
Modify commits history from the commit <hash>
$ git rebase -i <hash>^
reset
Remove parts of changes in file content from index. Parts are selected interactively within hunks of changes generated by git
$ git reset -p HEAD <file>
Come back to previous commit
$ git reset --soft HEAD^