For lazy reasons I pushed a bunch of commits with default messages and now it has become cumbersome, as I don't really know what I've changed in each commit.
How do I edit just the messages of previous commits and (if possible) keep the commit tree?
Git: edit previous commits’ messages only
git
Related Solutions
You have several options:
- Either wait until the version you need is present in the repository you use.
- Compile your own version and create a
deb. - Find a repository that provides the version you need for your version of your distribution(e.g. Git PPA).
- If you don't need any particular feature from the newer version, stay with the old one.
If a newer version is available in the repositories you use, then apt-get update && apt-get upgrade (as root) updates to the latest available version.
For those who don't know what a PPA is, link
I think what you're seeing is something like this:
$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.
Changes not staged for commit:
(use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
(use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
modified: sub (new commits)
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
To make sense of that, you need to know that when you put a submodule in your project that git tracks not just where it was cloned from but also the most recent (or chosen) commit ID of that submodule (i.e., its HEAD). On checkout, it makes sure to grab that particular version of the submodule; if it didn't, you could wind up with an incompatible version of a submodule when checking out an old version of your code.
Git is telling you that the HEAD commit ID of the submodule has changed, and that you can commit that change to the parent project. If you do a git diff, you'll see the changed commit ID (your IDs will of course be different):
$ git diff
diff --git a/sub b/sub
index d67371f..07bc855 160000
--- a/sub
+++ b/sub
@@ -1 +1 @@
-Subproject commit d67371f7485a97dd4d00802619f93a0cb4d2df16
+Subproject commit 07bc855dd4d958783a686241b911aead1d73ca3c
It doesn't matter why the submodule's checked out HEAD commit ID changed; both pulling a new version of the submodule (via, e.g., git pull in the submodule directory) or by locally committing in the submodule directory do the same thing — change the submodule HEAD commit ID by adding more commits — as far as the parent project is concerned.
Best Answer
To edit the commit messages of a series of commits, I run
where
firstshais an identifier for the parent commit of the first commit I want to edit. (You can use any valid reference here, sogit rebase -i HEAD~4will show the last four commits.)In the editor that opens, change all the “pick” entries to “reword” on commits you wish to modify, then close the editor; you will then be asked to enter commit messages for all the commits you chose.
Note that this will change the commit tree, because the hashes of the commits will change. You will have to force-push your new tree, or push it to a new branch. Take care when rebasing merges; you’ll need to use
-r(--rebase-merges), and read the “Rebasing merges” section of thegit rebasemanpage.To quickly edit only the last commit, run
(but beware of anything already staged for commit).