Git-knife: New GUI Tool for Editing Git Commit Metadata

Introduction to Git-knife

Git-knife is a newly released desktop graphical user interface (GUI) application designed for editing Git commit metadata. It provides a spreadsheet-like interface for modifying commit messages, author names, author emails, author dates, committer names, committer emails, and committer dates.

Addressing a Gap in Git Tools

Existing Git GUIs, such as GitKraken and Sublime Merge, primarily focus on reordering and rewording commits but often treat commit dates as immutable and do not expose committer date or author identity for arbitrary commits. Command-line tools like `git-filter-repo` or `git rebase` with environment tricks can rewrite this metadata but lack a graphical interface. Git-knife fills this gap by offering a GUI for these advanced editing capabilities.

Core Functionality and Safety Features

The tool operates by shelling out to the system Git command-line interface and rebuilding commits using `git commit-tree`, ensuring that file contents remain unchanged by reusing each commit's original tree. Key features include the ability to open a repository and list commits, edit various metadata fields, perform bulk find and replace operations using literal or regex patterns, and preview all changes before applying them. It also creates an automatic backup reference before each rewrite and warns users when a rewrite would affect already-pushed history.

Technical Details and Limitations

Git-knife is built using Node.js, pnpm, and Rust with Tauri v2, supporting macOS, Linux, and Windows. While it offers extensive metadata editing, the current version does not support reordering, squashing, or dropping commits, nor does it handle merge rewriting, staging, branches, or remotes. Merge commits are locked and not editable in this version.