Git: How to edit/reword a merge commit's message?

Question

How do I edit or reword a merge commit\'s message?

git commit --amend works if it\'s the last commit made (HEAD), but what if it comes befo

Answer 1

Another nice answer using only primitive commands -- by knittl https://stackoverflow.com/a/7599522/94687:

git checkout 
git commit --amend # edit message
git rebase HEAD previous_branch

or a better (more correct) final rebase command:

git rebase  previous_branch --onto HEAD

BTW, using the primitive commands might have the nice "feature" of not consuming too much CPU and making you wait unknown time until Git finishes thinking about the list of commits needing to be rebased in the case of git rebase -p -i HEAD^^^^ (such a command which would result in a list of only 4 last commits with the merge as last one in my case in my case took around 50 secs!).