I wrote the wrong thing in a commit message.

How can I change the message? The commit has not been pushed yet.

How to modify existing, unpushed commit messages?

I&#39;m using the following sources to expunge some large files and directories from my repository:

http://dound.com/2009/04/git-forever-remove-files-or-folders-from-history/

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1029969/why-is-my-git-repository-so-big/1036595#1036595


`git filter-branch` only seems to work on the current branch - is there a way to apply it to all branches at once?

git, filter-branch on all branches

What&#39;s the difference between `edit` and `reword` when you do a git rebase?

I&#39;m going through some docs which say this:

    Replace pick with:
    - edit to mark a commit for amending.
    - reword to change the log message.



git rebase - what&#39;s the difference between &#39;edit&#39; and &#39;reword&#39;

I have made a series of commits in Git and I realise now that I forgot to set my user name and user email properties correctly (new machine).  I have not yet pushed these commits to my repository, so how can I correct these commits before I do so (only the 3 latest commits on the master branch)?

I have been looking at `git reset` and `git commit -C &lt;id&gt; --reset-author`, but I don&#39;t think I&#39;m on the right track.

How to amend several commits in Git to change author

Take the following case:

I have some work in a topic branch and now I&#39;m ready to merge back to master:

    * eb3b733 3     [master] [origin/master]
    | * b62cae6 2   [topic]
    |/  
    * 38abeae 1


I perform the merge from master, resolve the conflicts and now I have:

    *   8101fe3 Merge branch &#39;topic&#39;  [master]
    |\  
    | * b62cae6 2                     [topic]
    * | eb3b733 3                     [origin/master]
    |/  
    * 38abeae 1


Now, the merge took me some time, so I do another fetch and notice that the remote master branch has new changes:

    *   8101fe3 Merge branch &#39;topic&#39;  [master]
    |\  
    | * b62cae6 2                     [topic]
    | | * e7affba 4                   [origin/master]
    | |/  
    |/|   
    * | eb3b733 3
    |/  
    * 38abeae 1

If I try `git rebase origin/master` from master, I&#39;m forced to resolve all conflicts again, and I also lose the merge commit:

    * d4de423 2       [master]
    * e7affba 4       [origin/master]
    * eb3b733 3
    | * b62cae6 2     [topic]
    |/  
    * 38abeae 1

Is there a clean way to rebase the merge commit so I end up with a history like the one I show below?

    *   51984c7 Merge branch &#39;topic&#39;  [master]
    |\  
    | * b62cae6 2                     [topic]
    * | e7affba 4                     [origin/master]
    * | eb3b733 3
    |/  
    * 38abeae 1




Rebasing a Git merge commit

The answers to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/179123/how-do-i-edit-an-incorrect-commit-message-in-git describe a way to amend previous commit messages that haven&#39;t yet been pushed upstream.  The new messages inherit the timestamps of the original commits.  This seems logical, but is there a way to also re-set the times?

How can one change the timestamp of an old commit in Git?

Suppose you have a history containing the three commits &lt;i&gt;A, B&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;C&lt;/i&gt;:

    A-B-C

I would like to combine the two commits &lt;i&gt;A&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;B&lt;/i&gt; to one commit &lt;i&gt;AB&lt;/i&gt;:

    AB-C

I tried

    git rebase -i A

which opens up my editor with the following contents:

    pick e97a17b B
    pick asd314f C

I change this to

    squash e97a17b B
    pick asd314f C

Then Git 1.6.0.4 says:

    Cannot &#39;squash&#39; without a previous commit

Is there a way or is this just impossible?

Combine the first two commits of a Git repository?

I have made 3 git commits, but have not been pushed.
How can I amend the older one (ddc6859af44) and (47175e84c) which is not the most recent one?

    $git log
    commit f4074f289b8a49250b15a4f25ca4b46017454781
    Date:   Tue Jan 10 10:57:27 2012 -0800
    
    commit ddc6859af448b8fd2e86dd0437c47b6014380a7f
    Date:   Mon Jan 9 16:29:30 2012 -0800
    
    commit 47175e84c2cb7e47520f7dde824718eae3624550
    Date:   Mon Jan 9 13:13:22 2012 -0800

How to amend older Git commit?

I accidentally dropped a DVD-rip into a website project, then carelessly `git commit -a -m ...`, and, zap, the repo was bloated by 2.2 gigs. Next time I made some edits, deleted the video file, and committed everything, but the compressed file is still there in the repository, in history.

I know I can start branches from those commits and rebase one branch onto another. But what should I do to merge the 2 commits so that the big file doesn&#39;t show in the history and is cleaned in the garbage collection procedure?

How to remove/delete a large file from commit history in the Git repository?

I had the same question as asked here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7193507/new-git-repository-in-root-directory-to-subsume-an-exist-repository-in-a-sub-dire

I followed this answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7193507/new-git-repository-in-root-directory-to-subsume-an-exist-repository-in-a-sub-dire/7194124#7194124

Now, `gitk --all` shows two histories: one culminating in the current `master`, and one named `original/refs/heads/master`.

I don&#39;t know what this second history is, or how to remove it from the repo. I don&#39;t need two histories in my repository.

How do I get rid of it?

To reproduce yourself:

    mkdir -p project-root/path/to/module
    cd project-root/path/to/module
    mkdir dir1 dir2 dir3 
    for dir in * ; do touch $dir/source-file-$dir.py ; done
    git init
    git add .
    git commit -m &#39;Initial commit&#39;
    
Now we have the original poster&#39;s problem. Let&#39;s move the root of the git repo to project-root using the answer linked above:

    git filter-branch --tree-filter &#39;mkdir -p path/to/module ; git mv dir1 dir2 dir3 path/to/module&#39; HEAD
    rm -rf path
    cd ../../../ # Now PWD is project-root
    mv path/to/module/.git .
    git reset --hard

Now, see my current problem:

    gitk --all &amp;
    git show-ref

How do I get rid of `refs/original/heads/master` and all associated history?

Remove refs/original/heads/master from git repo after filter-branch --tree-filter?

I usually submit a list of commits for review. If I have the following commits:

1. `HEAD`
2. `Commit3`  
3. `Commit2`  
4. `Commit1`

...I know that I can modify head commit with `git commit --amend`. But how can I modify `Commit1`, given that it is not the `HEAD` commit?

How to modify a specified commit?

I was writing a simple script on the school computer, and committing the changes to Git (in a repo that was in my pen drive, cloned from my computer at home). After several commits, I realized I was committing stuff as the root user.

Is there any way to change the author of these commits to my name?


How to change the author and committer name and e-mail of multiple commits in Git?

I tried to remove a file from my remote repo by running:

    git filter-branch --index-filter &#39;git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch Rakefile&#39; HEAD

But Git complains that 

&gt; Cannot create new backup. A previous backup already exists in refs/original/  
Force overwriting the backup with -f  
rm: cannot remove /.git-rewrite/backup-refs : Permission denied    
rm: cannot remove directory /.git-rewrite : Directory not empty

This was after I already deleted the .git-rewrite directory on Windows.

How can I remove that file? It&#39;s a 29Mb file sitting on my repo, so I quite need to remove the file. 

I tried to delete the commit in `git rebase -i`, but apparently because the commit touched a lot of different files, Git complains of conflicts and I aborted to be safe.

Purging file from Git repo failed, unable to create new backup

How do you squash your entire repository down to the first commit?

I can rebase to the first commit, but that would leave me with 2 commits.
Is there a way to reference the commit before the first one?

How to squash all git commits into one?

&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  
&gt; [How to purge a huge file from commits history in Git?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2100907/how-to-purge-a-huge-file-from-commits-history-in-git)  

&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;

I did a stupid thing. Imagine that I committed a 100MB file. Then I see this and delete this file and commit again. This is a normal procedure to delete a file. 

But now the side effect is that my history is heavy because it&#39;s saved this large file (I believe this is why it is heavy). I am only using local git, so I do not synchronize in any server.

How can I definitively remove this file and save disk space?

How do I remove a big file wrongly committed in git

I would like to put a Git project on GitHub but it contains certain files with sensitive data (usernames and passwords, like /config/deploy.rb for capistrano).

I know I can add these filenames to **.gitignore**, but this would not remove their history within Git.

I also don&#39;t want to start over again by deleting the /.git directory.

Is there a way to remove **all** traces of a particular file in your Git history?

Remove sensitive files and their commits from Git history

I accidentally committed an unwanted file (`filename.orig` while resolving a merge) to my repository several commits ago, without me noticing it until now. I want to completely delete the file from the repository history. 

Is it possible to rewrite the change history such that `filename.orig` was never added to the repository in the first place?


How do you fix a bad merge, and replay your good commits onto a fixed merge?

(solved, see bottom of the question body)  
Looking for this for a long time now, what I have till now is:

 - http://dound.com/2009/04/git-forever-remove-files-or-folders-from-history/
and
 - http://progit.org/book/ch9-7.html

Pretty much the same method, but both of them leave objects in pack files... Stuck.  
What I tried:

    git filter-branch --index-filter &#39;git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch file_name&#39;
    rm -Rf .git/refs/original
    rm -Rf .git/logs/
    git gc

Still have files in the pack, and this is how I know it:  

    git verify-pack -v .git/objects/pack/pack-3f8c0...bb.idx | sort -k 3 -n | tail -3

And this:

    git filter-branch --index-filter &quot;git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch file_name&quot; HEAD
    rm -rf .git/refs/original/ &amp;&amp; git reflog expire --all &amp;&amp;  git gc --aggressive --prune

The same...

Tried `git clone` trick, it removed some of the files (~3000 of them) but the largest files are still there...


I have some large legacy files in the repository, ~200M, and I really don&#39;t want them there... And I don&#39;t want to reset the repository to 0 :(

SOLUTION:
This is the shortest way to get rid of the files:

 1. check .git/packed-refs - my problem was that I had there a `refs/remotes/origin/master` line for a remote repository, delete it, otherwise git won&#39;t remove those files
 2. *(optional)* `git verify-pack -v .git/objects/pack/#{pack-name}.idx | sort -k 3 -n | tail -5` - to check for the largest files
 3. *(optional)* ` git rev-list --objects --all | grep a0d770a97ff0fac0be1d777b32cc67fe69eb9a98` - to check what are those files
 4. `git filter-branch --index-filter &#39;git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch file_names&#39;` - to remove a file from all revisions
 5. `rm -rf .git/refs/original/` - to remove git&#39;s backup
 6. `git reflog expire --all --expire=&#39;0 days&#39;` - to expire all the loose objects
 7. `git fsck --full --unreachable` - to check if there are any loose objects
 8. `git repack -A -d` - repacking
 9. `git prune` - to finally remove those objects

Remove file from git repository (history)

There&#39;s ways to change the message from later commits:

&lt;!-- language: sh --&gt;

    git commit --amend                    # for the most recent commit
    git rebase --interactive master~2     # but requires *parent*

How can you change the commit message of the very first commit (which has no parent)?

All Git Rewrite-History Solutions on Gang of Coders

Total of 19 Git Rewrite-History Solutions