Life's random bits By b1thunt3r (aka Ishan Jain)…
Change a Git Commit History

Change a Git Commit History

Ishan jain
You can rewrite the (git) history, yes you.

There might be instances where you have to change a commit to an earlier date, whether it's to maintain consistency in your commit history or for particular reasons related to managing branches. This could involve modifying both the author information and the commit message to accurately reflect these changes.

Most recent Commit

git commit --amend --no-edit --date <date> --author <author> -m <message>

Where:

  • date: new commit date for the commit
  • author: new commit author in 'Jane Smith jane.smith@example.com' format
  • message: new commit message

For example, the following command will set the commit date to Jan 31, 2023 at 2.30 pm UTC.

git commit --amend --no-edit --date 2023-01-31T14:30:00Z

Other Commits

To be able to edit in date for more older commits, we need to use git rebase.

  1. Start Interactive Rebase

    git rebase -i HEAD~<N>

    Where:

    • N: a commit before the commit you want to modify

  2. Select Commit Git rebase will open a text edit. You can choose the commit you want to edit by changing pick to edit next to the commit.

    edit <commit_hash> <commit_message>

  3. Amend Commit

    Upon saving and exiting the editor, Git will pause the rebase operation at the specified commit. Modify the commit date using:

    git commit --amend --no-edit --date <date>

  4. Continue Rebase

    git rebase --continue

    Repeat steps 3 and 4 if you selected multiple commits.

  5. Force Push

    git push --force

Example

The following sequence of commands will:

  • Rebase 5 commits back from HEAD.
  • Choose to commits
  • Modify date for commit a0b1c22, and continue rebase
  • Modify date for commit a0b1c24, and continue rebase

When you are done you can push the changes, remember you will need to force the changes.

git rebase -i HEAD~5

pick a0b1c25 message 5
edit a0b1c24 message 4
pick a0b1c23 message 3
edit a0b1c22 message 2
pick a0b1c21 message 1

git commit --amend --no-edit --date 2023-01-31T14:30:00Z
git rebase --continue
git commit --amend --no-edit --date 2023-02-01T10:15:00Z
git rebase --continue

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