gitgit-commit
I want to change the author of one specific commit in the history. It's not the last commit.
I know about this question – How do I change the author of a commit in git?
But I am thinking about something, where I identify the commit by hash or short-hash.
The easiest way would be to find the head commit of the branch as it was immediately before the rebase started in the reflog...
git reflog
and to reset the current branch to it (with the usual caveats about being absolutely sure before reseting with the --hard option).
Suppose the old commit was HEAD@{2} in the ref log:
git reset --hard HEAD@{2}
In Windows, you may need to quote the reference:
git reset --hard "HEAD@{2}"
You can check the history of the candidate old head by just doing a git log HEAD@{2} (Windows: git log "HEAD@{2}").
If you've not disabled per branch reflogs you should be able to simply do git reflog branchname@{1} as a rebase detaches the branch head before reattaching to the final head. I would double check this, though as I haven't verified this recently.
Per default, all reflogs are activated for non-bare repositories:
[core]
logAllRefUpdates = true
git commit --amend
will open your editor, allowing you to change the commit message of the most recent commit. Additionally, you can set the commit message directly in the command line with:
git commit --amend -m "New commit message"
…however, this can make multi-line commit messages or small corrections more cumbersome to enter.
Make sure you don't have any working copy changes staged before doing this or they will get committed too. (Unstaged changes will not get committed.)
If you've already pushed your commit up to your remote branch, then - after amending your commit locally (as described above) - you'll also need to force push the commit with:
git push <remote> <branch> --force
# Or
git push <remote> <branch> -f
Warning: force-pushing will overwrite the remote branch with the state of your local one. If there are commits on the remote branch that you don't have in your local branch, you will lose those commits.
Warning: be cautious about amending commits that you have already shared with other people. Amending commits essentially rewrites them to have different SHA IDs, which poses a problem if other people have copies of the old commit that you've rewritten. Anyone who has a copy of the old commit will need to synchronize their work with your newly re-written commit, which can sometimes be difficult, so make sure you coordinate with others when attempting to rewrite shared commit history, or just avoid rewriting shared commits altogether.
Another option is to use interactive rebase. This allows you to edit any message you want to update even if it's not the latest message.
In order to do a Git squash, follow these steps:
// n is the number of commits up to the last commit you want to be able to edit
git rebase -i HEAD~n
Once you squash your commits - choose the e/r for editing the message:
When you use git rebase -i HEAD~n there can be more than n commits. Git will "collect" all the commits in the last n commits, and if there was a merge somewhere in between that range you will see all the commits as well, so the outcome will be n + .
If you have to do it for more than a single branch and you might face conflicts when amending the content, set up git rerere and let Git resolve those conflicts automatically for you.
Best Answer
Interactive rebase off of a point earlier in the history than the commit you need to modify (
git rebase -i <earliercommit>). In the list of commits being rebased, change the text frompicktoeditnext to the hash of the one you want to modify. Then when git prompts you to change the commit, use this:For example, if your commit history is
A-B-C-D-E-FwithFasHEAD, and you want to change the author ofCandD, then you would...git rebase -i B(here is an example of what you will see after executing thegit rebase -i Bcommand)A, usegit rebase -i --rootCandDfrompicktoedit:wq).Cgit commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>"git rebase --continueDgit commit --amend --author="Author Name <email@address.com>"againgit rebase --continuegit push -fto update your origin with the updated commits.