Howto add a changed file to an older (not last) commit in Git

Question

Hey,

I changed several things over the last hour and committed them step by step. But I just realized I've forgot to add a changed file some commits ago.

The Log looks like this:

GIT TidyUpRequests u:1 d:0> git log 
commit fc6734b6351f6c36a587dba6dbd9d5efa30c09ce 
Author: David Klein <> 
Date:   Tue Apr 27 09:43:55 2010 +0200

    The Main program now tests both Webservices at once

commit 8a2c6014c2b035e37aebd310a6393a1ecb39f463 
Author: David Klein <>
Date:   Tue Apr 27 09:43:27 2010 +0200

    ISBNDBQueryHandler now uses the XPath functions from XPath.fs too

commit 06a504e277fd98d97eed4dad22dfa5933d81451f 
Author: David Klein <> 
Date:   Tue Apr 27 09:30:34 2010 +0200

    AmazonQueryHandler now uses the XPath Helper functions defined in XPath.fs

commit a0865e28be35a3011d0b6091819ec32922dd2dd8 <--- changed file should go here
Author: David Klein <> 
Date:   Tue Apr 27 09:29:53 2010 +0200

    Factored out some common XPath Operations

Any ideas? :)

Answer 1

You can try a rebase --interactive session to amend your old commit (provided you did not already push those commits to another repo).

Sometimes the thing fixed in b.2. cannot be amended to the not-quite perfect commit it fixes, because that commit is buried deeply in a patch series.
That is exactly what interactive rebase is for: use it after plenty of "a"s and "b"s, by rearranging and editing commits, and squashing multiple commits into one.

Start it with the last commit you want to retain as-is:

git rebase -i <after-this-commit>

An editor will be fired up with all the commits in your current branch (ignoring merge commits), which come after the given commit.
You can reorder the commits in this list to your heart's content, and you can remove them. The list looks more or less like this:

pick deadbee The oneline of this commit
pick fa1afe1 The oneline of the next commit
...

The oneline descriptions are purely for your pleasure; git rebase will not look at them but at the commit names ("deadbee" and "fa1afe1" in this example), so do not delete or edit the names.

By replacing the command "pick" with the command "edit", you can tell git rebase to stop after applying that commit, so that you can edit the files and/or the commit message, amend the commit, and continue rebasing.

Answer 2

Use git rebase. Specifically:

1. Use git rebase -i HEAD~10 (or whatever you need to see far enough back).
2. Mark the commit in question (a0865...) for edit.
3. Save the rebase file, and git will drop back to the shell and wait for you to fix that commit.
4. Add your file with git add.
5. Amend the commit with git commit --amend.
6. Do a git rebase --continue which will rewrite the rest of your commits against the new one.

Answer 3

with git 1.7, there's a really easy way using git rebase:

stage your files:

git add $files

create a new commit and re-use commit message of your "broken" commit

git commit -c master~4

prepend fixup! in the subject line (or squash! if you want to edit commit (message)):

fixup! Factored out some common XPath Operations

use git rebase -i --autosquash to fixup your commit

Answer 4

Git Tips: How to change commits deeper in history on Git wiki.