Accidentally pushed commit: change git commit message

Question

In my local repo I have one commit with an incorrect commit message.

I've already published the incorrect commit message with git push.

Now the remote repo (which is GitHub-hosted) has the incorrect commit message, too.

I've already tried git commit --amend, but found that it will not work for me in this situation because I've made additional commits since the incorrect one.

How would you fix this situation?

Answer 1

Easiest solution (but please read this whole answer before doing this):

1. git rebase -i <hash-of-commit-preceding-the-incorrect-one>
2. In the editor that opens, change pick to reword on the line for the incorrect commit.
3. Save the file and close the editor.
4. The editor will open again with the incorrect commit message. Fix it.
5. Save the file and close the editor.
6. git push --force to update GitHub.

This will mean you will be publishing a modified version of a previously published repository. If anyone pulled or fetched from your repo between when you made the mistake with the incorrect commit message, and when you fixed it, then they will experience some difficulties later. So be sure you can accept this consequence before trying this.

Answer 2

Rather than go the whole rebase route for one commit:

git reset --soft head~
git commit -m "The message you wanted to use"
git push -f

You can see the options in the git-reset manpage.

For a project that only you are working on, the changed history shouldn't be a problem.

Answer 3

If you're not pushed the code to your remote branch(Github/Bitbucket) you can change the commit message on the command line as below.

 git commit --amend -m "Your new message"

If you're working on a specific branch do this.

git commit --amend -m "BRANCH-NAME: new message"

If you've already pushed the code with wrong message then you need to be careful when changing the message. i.e after you change the commit message and try pushing it again you end up with having issues. To make it smooth follow these steps. Please read the entire answer before doing it

git commit --amend -m "BRANCH-NAME : your new message"

git push -f origin BRANCH-NAME                # Not a best practice. Read below why?

Important note: When you use the force push directly you might end up with code issues that other developers are working on the same branch. So to avoid that conflicts you need to pull the code from your branch before making the force push

 git commit --amend -m "BRANCH-NAME : your new message"
 git pull origin BRANCH-NAME
 git push -f origin BRANCH-NAME

This is the best practice when changing the commit message, if it was already pushed.

Answer 4

If you have to change an old commit message over multiple branches (i.e., the commit with the erroneous message is present in multiple branches) you might want to use

git filter-branch -f --msg-filter 'sed "s/<old message>/<new message>/g"' -- --all

to replace the commit message.

Git will create a temporary directory for rewriting and additionally backup old references in refs/original/.

-f will enforce the execution of the operation. This is necessary if the the temporary directory is already present or if there are already references stored under refs/original. If that is not the case, you can drop this flag.

-- separates filter-branch options from revision options

--all will make sure, that all branches and tags are rewritten.

Due to the backup of your old references, you can easily go back to the state before executing the command.

Say, you want to recover your master and access it in branch old_master:

git checkout -b old_master refs/original/refs/heads/master

After you are satisfied with your changes use git push -f to push the changes to your public repo.

Note that you should inform your collaborators about this since all the hashes of the commits starting with the first modified one have been changed.