Break a previous commit into multiple commits

Question

Without creating a branch and doing a bunch of funky work on a new branch, is it possible to break a single commit into a few different commits after it\'s been committed to

Answer 1

It's been more than 8 years, but maybe someone will find it helpful anyway. I was able to do the trick without rebase -i. The idea is to lead git to the same state it was before you did git commit:

# first rewind back (mind the dot,
# though it can be any valid path,
# for instance if you want to apply only a subset of the commit)
git reset --hard  .

# apply the changes
git checkout 

# we're almost there, but the changes are in the index at the moment,
# hence one more step (exactly as git gently suggests):
# (use "git reset HEAD ..." to unstage)
git reset

After this you'll see this shiny Unstaged changes after reset: and your repo is in a state like you're about to commit all these files. From now on you can easily commit it again like you usually do. Hope it helps.