With git rebase, is there a way to reword commit messages in the git-rebase-todo using the default commands?

Question

Suppose I run git rebase -i HEAD~3

pick 6b24464 foo pick a681432 Foo pick 8ccba08 foo foo  # Rebase 960c384..8ccba08 onto 960c384 # # Commands: #  p, pick = use commit #  r, reword = use commit, but edit the commit message #  e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending #  s, squash = use commit, but meld into previous commit #  f, fixup = like "squash", but discard this commit's log message #  x, exec = run command (the rest of the line) using shell 

I would like to reword commit messages directly from this file, rather than editing each commit message one at a time (as per usual with reword), like so:

reword 6b24464 foo bar reword a681432 Foo Bar reword 8ccba08 foo foo bar bar  # Rebase 960c384..8ccba08 onto 960c384 # # Commands: #  p, pick = use commit #  r, reword = use commit, but edit the commit message #  e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending #  s, squash = use commit, but meld into previous commit #  f, fixup = like "squash", but discard this commit's log message #  x, exec = run command (the rest of the line) using shell 

I had hoped that this could be done using just reword or edit, but I can't seem to figure out how (if even possible). I've been able to achieve the same result with

x git cherry-pick 6b24464 && git commit -amend "foo bar" 

However, this is more time consuming than I'd like for large rebases. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can probably use the exec option to achieve what you want.

Use an exec command similar to git commit --amend -m "this is the new message"

You can either use that directly, or if you need more sophistication put it in an external script called my_reword.

#!/bin/sh git commit --amend -m "$1" 

Then add in the exec line wherever you want

pick 6b24464 foo pick a681432 Foo x my_reword "this is a new message" pick 8ccba08 foo foo