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
$ git branch -D temp-edit-branch
* -- A' -- B' -- C' (master)
\
A -- B -- C
Note that A-B-C are now dangling commits; a git-prune would be needed to clean
them out of the repository.
The important thing to realise is that you can never really edit a commit.
The best you can do is reapply it. In this example, the fact that B' makes
the same change as B is irrelevant - they are two separate commits.
Note: this is only workable if you haven't pushed this branch to another
repository. The other repository would retain the original A--B--C branch
and you will get "won't fast forward" errors if you try to push the
new "A'--B'--C'" branch.
Andy
--
Dr Andy Parkins, M Eng (hons), MIEE
andyparkins@xxxxxxxxx
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