# Change old git commit message with rebase

In this post, we will see step by step how to change older git commit messages with the help of `rebase -i` git command.

## Quick and Important Notes

1. If you want to change the last commit, then you can easily change your commit message using `--ammend` option like this:
    
2. Another thing to note is, if you have already pushed your commit to the remote repository and making these changes, then you have to force push `git push -f` to replace remote commit, which can also remove other commits from the remote repo, if you are working on the team, so be careful before executing these commands.
    

```plaintext
git commit --amend -m "your new commit message goes here"
```

This command will change your recent last commit. But if your commit message is an old commit message then read further.

## check the position of your commit

First, find the position of your commit message that you want to change.

```sh
git log --oneline
```

Let's say commits look like this:

```sh
704a4d0 (HEAD -> master) third commit
f67ecc5 second commit
7d85495 wrong commit message
e6dd453 Add readme
```

And from the above git commits we want to change the `7d85495 wrong commit message`.

## Interactive Rebase

`git rebase -i HEAD~n` command will Open your default editor, in my case [neovim](https://neovim.io/) and also displays a list of last `n` commits.

```sh
git rebase -i HEAD~4
```

will generate output similar to:

```sh
pick 7d85495 wrong commit message
pick f67ecc5 second commit
pick 704a4d0 third commit

# Rebase e6dd453..704a4d0 onto e6dd453 (3 commands)
#
# Commands:
# p, pick <commit> = use commit
# r, reword <commit> = use commit, but edit the commit message
# e, edit <commit> = use commit, but stop for amending
# s, squash <commit> = use commit, but meld into previous commit
# f, fixup <commit> = like "squash", but discard this commit's log message
# x, exec <command> = run command (the rest of the line) using shell
# b, break = stop here (continue rebase later with 'git rebase --continue')
# d, drop <commit> = remove commit
# l, label <label> = label current HEAD with a name
# t, reset <label> = reset HEAD to a label
# m, merge [-C <commit> | -c <commit>] <label> [# <oneline>]
# .       create a merge commit using the original merge commit's
# .       message (or the oneline, if no original merge commit was
# .       specified). Use -c <commit> to reword the commit message.
#
# These lines can be re-ordered; they are executed from top to bottom.
#
# If you remove a line here THAT COMMIT WILL BE LOST.
#
# However, if you remove everything, the rebase will be aborted.
#
# Note that empty commits are commented out
```

As you can see `rebase` command provided pretty good comments with what different actions you can take. In our case, we want to correct `wrong commit message` so we need to replace the word `pick` with `reword` and then also change the message as we like.

```sh
reword 7d85495 wrong commit message
pick f67ecc5 second commit
pick 704a4d0 third commit

# Rebase e6dd453..704a4d0 onto e6dd453 (3 commands)
...
```

And finally, save the changes and exit, for `vim` editor we can do `:wq`.

Now rebase will ask you to edit your commit message, here you can put the correct message, I will write `Correct commit message` in my example:

```sh
Correct commit message

# Please enter the commit message for your changes. Lines starting
# with '#' will be ignored, and an empty message aborts the commit.
#
# Date:      Tue Jan 3 13:10:35 2023 +0545
#
# interactive rebase in progress; onto e6dd453
# Last command done (1 command done):
#    reword 7d85495 Correct commit message
# Next commands to do (2 remaining commands):
#    pick f67ecc5 second commit
#    pick 704a4d0 third commit
# You are currently editing a commit while rebasing branch 'master' on 'e6dd453'.
#
# Changes to be committed:
#	modified:   readme.md
#
```

save and exit your editor again

## Confirm your changes

```sh
git log --oneline
```

should output similar to:

```sh
10d13bb (HEAD -> master) third commit
7b200bb second commit
92073a4 Correct commit message
e6dd453 Add readme
```

And you should see the correct commit message

## Force push

If you changed the commit message after it was already pushed to your remote git repository, then you have to force-push your changes because your commit hash is already changed.

In our case old commit hash was `7d85495` and the new commit has is `92073a4`

```sh
git push origin <branch-name> -f
```