Subject: Re: changing log entries

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2006 09:48:44 +0100

Andy Parkins wrote:

> On Wednesday 2006 December 13 23:08, Jon Masters wrote:
> 
>> Anyway, now I would like to change an existing log entry to make it a
>> bit cleaner (read: add a first line that's under 80 characters). What's
>> the best way to change an existing log entry for a commit?
> 
> If it's HEAD you want to change:
>  git-commit --amend
> 
> If it's not, it's a bit harder.  You could pull each commit out as a patch and 
> apply them again later after a git-reset.  However, git has a tool for 
> automating a lot of that:  git-rebase.  man git-rebase has some excellent 
> examples.
> 
>  * -- A -- B -- C (master)
> 
> Let's say you want to edit A; make a new branch at A:
> 
> $ git branch temp-edit-branch master^^
>  
>  * -- A (temp-edit-branch)
>        \
>         B -- C (master)
> 
> Edit A with git-commit --amend.  This makes a new A, A' that has the new 
> commit message:
> 
>  * -- A' (temp-edit-branch)
>   \
>    A -- B -- C (master)
> 
> Then you switch to "master" and rebase master onto temp-edit-branch; you can 
> then delete temp-edit-branch
> 
> $ git-checkout master
> $ git-rebase temp-edit-branch

Theoretically you should do

$ git rebase --onto temp-edit-branch master^^ master

but thanks to automatic detection that patch is already applied the
above also should work. Well, unless you edit the commit so much
that git does not recognize it as the same commit...

> $ git branch -D temp-edit-branch
> 
>  * -- A' -- B' -- C' (master)
>   \
>    A -- B -- C

...in which case "git rebase temp-edit-branch master" would give you

  * -- A' --A* -- B* -- C* (master)
   \
    A -- B -- C

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Warsaw, Poland
ShadeHawk on #git