How to change name of git commit that was pushed?

Question

I have a commit that was pushed to the remote and I want to change its message.

I know that I can use git push -f to force push different commit but first I need to remove old commit and keep changes, so I can commit again.

How can I do this?

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 16 '17 at 06:33

As a disclaimer, this answer involves rewriting the history of the branch in question. As such, it should be used with caution on branches which have been publicly shared.

The easiest fix here, assuming that no one else has pushed to the remote counterpart of the branch, would be to simply amend the commit via:

git commit --amend

This should bring up a text editor where you can change the commit message to whatever you want.

As you mentioned, you will now have to force push this branch to the remote via:

git push --force origin yourBranch

Thanks, I thought that `--amend` is only for local commits. – jcubic Jun 16 '17 at 06:47 — jcubic, Jun 16 '17 at 06:47

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 16 '17 at 06:32

2

If you want to change the latest commit, use

git commit --amend

However, for already pushed commits, you should only do this if you are sure that nobody has checked out the commit that you are overwriting.

answered Jun 16 '17 at 06:32

W.Mann

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 16 '17 at 06:33

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well you need to use the following command git commit --amend which will create the same commit locally but with correct message, then you push it to remote

answered Jun 16 '17 at 06:33

Ahmed Omar

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 16 '17 at 06:49

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Using:

git commit --amend

seems to be the obvious solution here, but you didn't mention any branch in your question so that answer may not be correct solution in your case. If the commit you want to rename is on a branch that only you created and used so far and hasn't been merged into another branch, I suggest another option which is:

Branching to a new branch from the commit prior to the commit in the question
re-performing the code change
re-committing with correct message text
pushing the new branch
delete and push-of-deletion of the old branch

Still, it really depends whether the commit were on a separate branch or on a major branch (e.g. master).

answered Jun 16 '17 at 06:49

yorammi

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I think the commit in question was already pushed to the remote. – Tim Biegeleisen Jun 16 '17 at 06:51
right, but if it is on a branch that nobody used, it can be deleted safely. Seems that the question lack the information about the branch. Anyway, seems that he accepted your answer so I've just suggested another approach to the issue – yorammi Jun 16 '17 at 06:58

How to change name of git commit that was pushed?

4 Answers4