Edit an incorrect commit message in Git that has already been pushed

Question

I did a Git commit and push, but wrote the totally wrong thing in the comment.

How do I change the comment? I have already pushed the commit to the remote.

Possible duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/927358/git-undo-last-commit — mensi, Apr 14 '12 at 12:52
Just in case: Is [this](http://stackoverflow.com/q/6441902/777186) what you are looking for? — jogojapan, Apr 14 '12 at 12:52
Look here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/457379/how-do-i-edit-an-incorrect-commit-message-in-git-ive-pushed — cezar, Apr 14 '12 at 12:53

score 23 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 14 '12 at 12:55

23

git commit --amend will allow you to edit the commit message.

If you already pushed that commit, you need to run git push --force. Only do that if you are sure nobody pulled it yet!

If people pulled the commit from your repo, simply leave the message as it is.

answered Apr 14 '12 at 12:55

ThiefMaster

310,957
84
592
636

I did git commit --amend and modified the message, but after that i don't know what to do. Here is all available commands ^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Page ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos ^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where Is ^V Next Page ^U UnCut Text ^T To Spell – emilan Apr 14 '12 at 13:04
2

So you don't know how to use your default editor?! It looks like `nano`, so simply press `CTRL+X`, followed by `Y`, followed by `RETURN` – ThiefMaster Apr 14 '12 at 13:08
sorry it doesn't help me, because I want to change commit message after pushing. git commit --amend doesn't work in this situation. – emilan Apr 14 '12 at 13:19
2

@emilan If you want to change it, after you pushed, you will need to do as ThiefMaster says and push again with the --force option. – Andy Apr 14 '12 at 14:30

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 23 '17 at 18:16

If you wrote the wrong thing and the commit has not yet been pushed, you can do the following to change the commit message:

$ git commit --amend

This will open your default text editor, where you can edit the message. On the other hand, you can do this all in one command:

$ git commit --amend -m 'xxxxxxx'

If you have already pushed the message, you can amend the commit and force push, but this is not recommended.

To force push : git push --force

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 02 '23 at 14:29

It is generally not suggested to use --force during git push as it has potential to reset the remote branch to your local branch changes, so the people presently working on the remote branch or sub-branch from the remote branch will be working on out of sync files, as the parent branch is hard reset.

So there is a cleaner way to handle this.

For the latest commit: In your current branch:

git commit --amend -m "New Commit"
git pull (This will merge based on the ort strategy)
git push origin <current_branch>

Edit an incorrect commit message in Git that has already been pushed

3 Answers3

Linked