Changing the message of the first commit? (git)

Question

There's ways to change the message from later commits:

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)?

Answer 1

You could use git filter-branch:

cd test
git init

touch initial
git add -A
git commit -m "Initial commit"

touch a
git add -A
git commit -m "a"

touch b
git add -A
git commit -m "b"

git log

-->
8e6b49e... b
945e92a... a
72fc158... Initial commit

git filter-branch --msg-filter "sed \"s|^Initial commit|New initial commit|g\"" -- --all

git log
-->
c5988ea... b
e0331fd... a
51995f1... New initial commit

Answer 2

This might help. http://serverfault.com/questions/12918/how-do-i-fix-the-metainformation-on-the-first-commit-in-git

Answer 3

Assuming that you have a clean working tree, you can do the following.

# checkout the root commit
git checkout <sha1-of-root>

# amend the commit
git commit --amend

# rebase all the other commits in master onto the amended root
git rebase --onto HEAD HEAD master