GIT-HISTORY(1) Git Manual GIT-HISTORY(1)

git-history - EXPERIMENTAL: Rewrite history

git history reword <commit> [--dry-run] [--update-refs=(branches|head)]
git history split <commit> [--dry-run] [--update-refs=(branches|head)] [--] [<pathspec>...]

Rewrite history by rearranging or modifying specific commits in the history.

THIS COMMAND IS EXPERIMENTAL. THE BEHAVIOR MAY CHANGE.

This command is related to git-rebase(1) in that both commands can be used to rewrite history. There are a couple of major differences though:

•git-history(1) can work in a bare repository as it does not need to touch either the index or the worktree.
•git-history(1) does not execute any githooks(5) at the current point in time. This may change in the future.
•git-history(1) by default updates all branches that are descendants of the original commit to point to the rewritten commit.

Overall, git-history(1) aims to provide a more opinionated way to modify your commit history that is simpler to use compared to git-rebase(1) in general.

Use git-rebase(1) if you want to reapply a range of commits onto a different base, or interactive rebases if you want to edit a range of commits at once.

This command does not (yet) work with histories that contain merges. You should use git-rebase(1) with the --rebase-merges flag instead.

Furthermore, the command does not support operations that can result in merge conflicts. This limitation is by design as history rewrites are not intended to be stateful operations. The limitation can be lifted once (if) Git learns about first-class conflicts.

The following commands are available to rewrite history in different ways:

reword <commit>

Rewrite the commit message of the specified commit. All the other details of this commit remain unchanged. This command will spawn an editor with the current message of that commit.

split <commit> [--] [<pathspec>...]

Interactively split up <commit> into two commits by choosing hunks introduced by it that will be moved into the new split-out commit. These hunks will then be written into a new commit that becomes the parent of the previous commit. The original commit stays intact, except that its parent will be the newly split-out commit.

The commit messages of the split-up commits will be asked for by launching the configured editor. Authorship of the commit will be the same as for the original commit.

If passed, <pathspec> can be used to limit which changes shall be split out of the original commit. Files not matching any of the pathspecs will remain part of the original commit. For more details, see the pathspec entry in gitglossary(7).

It is invalid to select either all or no hunks, as that would lead to one of the commits becoming empty.

--dry-run

Do not update any references, but instead print any ref updates in a format that can be consumed by git-update-ref(1). Necessary new objects will be written into the repository, so applying these printed ref updates is generally safe.

--update-refs=(branches|head)

Control which references will be updated by the command, if any. With branches, all local branches that point to commits which are descendants of the original commit will be rewritten. With head, only the current HEAD reference will be rewritten. Defaults to branches.

$ git log --stat --oneline
3f81232 (HEAD -> main) original
 bar | 1 +
 foo | 1 +
 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+)
$ git history split HEAD
diff --git a/bar b/bar
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5716ca5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/bar
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bar
(1/1) Stage addition [y,n,q,a,d,p,?]? y
diff --git a/foo b/foo
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..257cc56
--- /dev/null
+++ b/foo
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+foo
(1/1) Stage addition [y,n,q,a,d,p,?]? n
$ git log --stat --oneline
7cebe64 (HEAD -> main) original
 foo | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
d1582f3 split-out commit
 bar | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

Part of the git(1) suite

2026-04-19 Git 2.54.0