Editing commit messages with rebase in Git - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Editing commit messages with rebase

📖 Scenario: You have made several commits in your local Git repository. Now, you want to improve the commit messages to make them clearer and more descriptive before sharing your work with your team.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to edit commit messages of previous commits using Git's interactive rebase feature.

📋 What You'll Learn

Have a Git repository with at least three commits

Use Git commands to edit commit messages

Understand how to use interactive rebase safely

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Improving commit messages helps your team understand changes clearly and keeps project history clean.

💼 Career

Editing commit messages is a common task for developers and DevOps engineers to maintain professional and readable version control history.

1

Create three commits with specific messages

Create three commits in your Git repository with these exact commit messages in order: Initial commit, Add README file, and Fix typo in README. Use git commit -m to set the messages.

Git

# Create three commits with the exact messages
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git commit -m "message" to create commits with the exact messages.

2

Start interactive rebase to edit commit messages

Run the Git command to start an interactive rebase for the last three commits using git rebase -i HEAD~3.

Git

git init

echo "Project start" > file.txt
git add file.txt
git commit -m "Initial commit"

echo "# Project README" > README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "Add README file"

sed -i 's/README/Readme/' README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "Fix typo in README"

# Start interactive rebase for last 3 commits
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git rebase -i HEAD~3 to start editing the last three commits.

3

Change commit messages to new ones in the rebase editor

In the interactive rebase editor, change the word pick to reword for all three commits to edit their messages. Save and close the editor to proceed.

Git

git init

echo "Project start" > file.txt
git add file.txt
git commit -m "Initial commit"

echo "# Project README" > README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "Add README file"

sed -i 's/README/Readme/' README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "Fix typo in README"

git rebase -i HEAD~3

# In the editor, replace 'pick' with 'reword' for all commits
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Change pick to reword for each commit line in the editor to edit messages.

4

Edit commit messages and verify final log

For each commit message prompt during the rebase, change the messages to these exact new messages in order: Setup project files, Add project README, and Correct README typo. After finishing, run git log --oneline and print the output.

Git

git init

echo "Project start" > file.txt
git add file.txt
git commit -m "Initial commit"

echo "# Project README" > README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "Add README file"

sed -i 's/README/Readme/' README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "Fix typo in README"

git rebase -i HEAD~3

# Edit commit messages to:
# "Setup project files"
# "Add project README"
# "Correct README typo"
# Then run git log --oneline and print the output
# Your code here

Need a hint?

When prompted, replace each commit message with the new exact message. Then run git log --oneline to see the updated commits.