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I have been pushed my changes. which is ahead of 2 recent commits. my tree would look alike,

git log

ac123d commit 1
vr43de commit 2
q6ade6 commit 3

i have to do small changes in commit 3 which is just a word replacement. i need to edit 3rd commit without producing additional commit. is there a way to do? or its acceptable?

Mohideen bin Mohammed
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2 Answers2

3

The crux of the question (emphasis added)

i need to edit 3rd commit without producing additional commit. is there a way to do?

No, it is not possible. A commit cannot be changed in any way. The commit's ID is calculated in such a way that any change to the commit's content would change the ID of that commit and every commit descended from it, and if you "change" a commit's ID that really means you're creating a new commit (albeit one that may be very similar to the original).

The possible choices are:

1) Fix the problem in the next commit, and accept that the history will always contain the incorrect words in these previous commits

2) Rewrite the history, requiring clean-up on all clones of the remote(s) to which you've already pushed the existing commits

Mark Adelsberger
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1

try : 

git rebase -i <sha or tag before the commit you wish to update>

this will open an editor where you will specify what you want to do then on commit 3 you can update commit

  • replace pick by reword if you meant to change commit message
  • replace pick by edit if you want to change commited files. git rebase execution will stop an you will have the opportunity to do your changes. Once you have finished your corrections use git commit --amend then git rebase --continue will restart the process of rebase.

then you will use 

git push -f

to update server side (be careful this has some draw back, mainly if other dev have pulled this branch)

I suggest that you 1st create a branch and practice this on a branch.

Also have a look at git doc on interactive rebase

jo_
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    `--force-with-lease` should be used instead of `-f`/`--force` to prevent overwriting newer commits on the remote. https://developer.atlassian.com/blog/2015/04/force-with-lease/ – 0x5453 Jan 04 '18 at 14:14