Git Update Commit Message

By  on  

One of my faults as a professional developer is that my commit messages aren't always as descriptive as they could be.  Sometimes I even notice a spelling error in them.  Bleh -- that's not cool, man.  When I do catch that my last commit message isn't good enough, I find the following git command useful:

The command below rewrites the message for the previous commit.  You can omit the -m and message to go into the commit shell instead.

git commit --amend -m "This is the new message"

Do realize, however, that performing this after you've pushed to a remote repo is considered bad as it rewrites history. If you haven't pushed, however, the command above is gold!

Recent Features

  • By
    39 Shirts – Leaving Mozilla

    In 2001 I had just graduated from a small town high school and headed off to a small town college. I found myself in the quaint computer lab where the substandard computers featured two browsers: Internet Explorer and Mozilla. It was this lab where I fell...

  • By
    Interview with a Pornhub Web Developer

    Regardless of your stance on pornography, it would be impossible to deny the massive impact the adult website industry has had on pushing the web forward. From pushing the browser's video limits to pushing ads through WebSocket so ad blockers don't detect them, you have...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Submit Button Enabling

    "Enabling" you ask? Yes. We all know how to disable the submit upon form submission and the reasons for doing so, but what about re-enabling the submit button after an allotted amount of time. After all, what if the user presses the "stop"...

  • By
    MooTools Equal Heights Plugin:  Equalizer

    Keeping equal heights between elements within the same container can be hugely important for the sake of a pretty page. Unfortunately sometimes keeping columns the same height can't be done with CSS -- you need a little help from your JavaScript friends. Well...now you're...

Discussion

  1. This is one of the things I do more frequently :-/

    The good thing is that, with amend, you can also include in the commit new changes (provided that you have added them to the staging area).

    The drawback is that it’s **bad** to amend a commit that has already been pushed to a remote repository.

  2. May I point you to an article of my own, in which I describe some more solutions on how to change commit messages:

    http://www.gamez.name/change-commit-message-git/

  3. Dorian Marchal

    Be careful, this command rewrites history and shouldn’t be used if you already pushed your last commit.

  4. And you are noticing it now? :D

    One thing to remember is HASH is changed on amending.

  5. And you are noticing it now? :D

    Well, one thing to notice is that HASH of that particular commit is rewritten when amending.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!