1GIT-REBASE(1) Git Manual GIT-REBASE(1)
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6 git-rebase - Reapply commits on top of another base tip
7
9 git rebase [-i | --interactive] [<options>] [--exec <cmd>] [--onto <newbase>]
10 [<upstream> [<branch>]]
11 git rebase [-i | --interactive] [<options>] [--exec <cmd>] [--onto <newbase>]
12 --root [<branch>]
13 git rebase --continue | --skip | --abort | --quit | --edit-todo | --show-current-patch
14
17 If <branch> is specified, git rebase will perform an automatic git
18 checkout <branch> before doing anything else. Otherwise it remains on
19 the current branch.
20 If <upstream> is not specified, the upstream configured in
22 branch.<name>.remote and branch.<name>.merge options will be used (see
23 git-config(1) for details) and the --fork-point option is assumed. If
24 you are currently not on any branch or if the current branch does not
25 have a configured upstream, the rebase will abort.
26 All changes made by commits in the current branch but that are not in
28 <upstream> are saved to a temporary area. This is the same set of
29 commits that would be shown by git log <upstream>..HEAD; or by git log
30 'fork_point'..HEAD, if --fork-point is active (see the description on
31 --fork-point below); or by git log HEAD, if the --root option is
32 specified.
33 The current branch is reset to <upstream>, or <newbase> if the --onto
35 option was supplied. This has the exact same effect as git reset --hard
36 <upstream> (or <newbase>). ORIG_HEAD is set to point at the tip of the
37 branch before the reset.
38 The commits that were previously saved into the temporary area are then
40 reapplied to the current branch, one by one, in order. Note that any
41 commits in HEAD which introduce the same textual changes as a commit in
42 HEAD..<upstream> are omitted (i.e., a patch already accepted upstream
43 with a different commit message or timestamp will be skipped).
44 It is possible that a merge failure will prevent this process from
46 being completely automatic. You will have to resolve any such merge
47 failure and run git rebase --continue. Another option is to bypass the
48 commit that caused the merge failure with git rebase --skip. To check
49 out the original <branch> and remove the .git/rebase-apply working
50 files, use the command git rebase --abort instead.
51 Assume the following history exists and the current branch is "topic":
53 A---B---C topic
55 /
56 D---E---F---G master
57 From this point, the result of either of the following commands:
60 git rebase master
62 git rebase master topic
63 would be:
65 A'--B'--C' topic
67 /
68 D---E---F---G master
69 NOTE: The latter form is just a short-hand of git checkout topic
72 followed by git rebase master. When rebase exits topic will remain the
73 checked-out branch.
74 If the upstream branch already contains a change you have made (e.g.,
76 because you mailed a patch which was applied upstream), then that
77 commit will be skipped. For example, running git rebase master on the
78 following history (in which A' and A introduce the same set of changes,
79 but have different committer information):
80 A---B---C topic
82 /
83 D---E---A'---F master
84 will result in:
87 B'---C' topic
89 /
90 D---E---A'---F master
91 Here is how you would transplant a topic branch based on one branch to
94 another, to pretend that you forked the topic branch from the latter
95 branch, using rebase --onto.
96 First let’s assume your topic is based on branch next. For example, a
98 feature developed in topic depends on some functionality which is found
99 in next.
100 o---o---o---o---o master
102 \
103 o---o---o---o---o next
104 \
105 o---o---o topic
106 We want to make topic forked from branch master; for example, because
109 the functionality on which topic depends was merged into the more
110 stable master branch. We want our tree to look like this:
111 o---o---o---o---o master
113 | \
114 | o'--o'--o' topic
115 \
116 o---o---o---o---o next
117 We can get this using the following command:
120 git rebase --onto master next topic
122 Another example of --onto option is to rebase part of a branch. If we
124 have the following situation:
125 H---I---J topicB
127 /
128 E---F---G topicA
129 /
130 A---B---C---D master
131 then the command
134 git rebase --onto master topicA topicB
136 would result in:
138 H'--I'--J' topicB
140 /
141 | E---F---G topicA
142 |/
143 A---B---C---D master
144 This is useful when topicB does not depend on topicA.
147 A range of commits could also be removed with rebase. If we have the
149 following situation:
150 E---F---G---H---I---J topicA
152 then the command
155 git rebase --onto topicA~5 topicA~3 topicA
157 would result in the removal of commits F and G:
159 E---H'---I'---J' topicA
161 This is useful if F and G were flawed in some way, or should not be
164 part of topicA. Note that the argument to --onto and the <upstream>
165 parameter can be any valid commit-ish.
166 In case of conflict, git rebase will stop at the first problematic
168 commit and leave conflict markers in the tree. You can use git diff to
169 locate the markers (<<<<<<) and make edits to resolve the conflict. For
170 each file you edit, you need to tell Git that the conflict has been
171 resolved, typically this would be done with
172 git add <filename>
174 After resolving the conflict manually and updating the index with the
176 desired resolution, you can continue the rebasing process with
177 git rebase --continue
179 Alternatively, you can undo the git rebase with
181 git rebase --abort
183
185 rebase.useBuiltin
186 Set to false to use the legacy shellscript implementation of git-
187 rebase(1). Is true by default, which means use the built-in rewrite
188 of it in C.
189 The C rewrite is first included with Git version 2.20. This option
191 serves an an escape hatch to re-enable the legacy version in case
192 any bugs are found in the rewrite. This option and the shellscript
193 version of git-rebase(1) will be removed in some future release.
194 If you find some reason to set this option to false other than
196 one-off testing you should report the behavior difference as a bug
197 in git.
198 rebase.stat
200 Whether to show a diffstat of what changed upstream since the last
201 rebase. False by default.
202 rebase.autoSquash
204 If set to true enable --autosquash option by default.
205 rebase.autoStash
207 When set to true, automatically create a temporary stash entry
208 before the operation begins, and apply it after the operation ends.
209 This means that you can run rebase on a dirty worktree. However,
210 use with care: the final stash application after a successful
211 rebase might result in non-trivial conflicts. This option can be
212 overridden by the --no-autostash and --autostash options of git-
213 rebase(1). Defaults to false.
214 rebase.missingCommitsCheck
216 If set to "warn", git rebase -i will print a warning if some
217 commits are removed (e.g. a line was deleted), however the rebase
218 will still proceed. If set to "error", it will print the previous
219 warning and stop the rebase, git rebase --edit-todo can then be
220 used to correct the error. If set to "ignore", no checking is done.
221 To drop a commit without warning or error, use the drop command in
222 the todo list. Defaults to "ignore".
223 rebase.instructionFormat
225 A format string, as specified in git-log(1), to be used for the
226 todo list during an interactive rebase. The format will
227 automatically have the long commit hash prepended to the format.
228 rebase.abbreviateCommands
230 If set to true, git rebase will use abbreviated command names in
231 the todo list resulting in something like this:
232 p deadbee The oneline of the commit
234 p fa1afe1 The oneline of the next commit
235 ...
236 instead of:
238 pick deadbee The oneline of the commit
240 pick fa1afe1 The oneline of the next commit
241 ...
242 Defaults to false.
244 rebase.rescheduleFailedExec
246 Automatically reschedule exec commands that failed. This only makes
247 sense in interactive mode (or when an --exec option was provided).
248 This is the same as specifying the --reschedule-failed-exec option.
249
251 --onto <newbase>
252 Starting point at which to create the new commits. If the --onto
253 option is not specified, the starting point is <upstream>. May be
254 any valid commit, and not just an existing branch name.
255 As a special case, you may use "A...B" as a shortcut for the merge
257 base of A and B if there is exactly one merge base. You can leave
258 out at most one of A and B, in which case it defaults to HEAD.
259 <upstream>
261 Upstream branch to compare against. May be any valid commit, not
262 just an existing branch name. Defaults to the configured upstream
263 for the current branch.
264 <branch>
266 Working branch; defaults to HEAD.
267 --continue
269 Restart the rebasing process after having resolved a merge
270 conflict.
271 --abort
273 Abort the rebase operation and reset HEAD to the original branch.
274 If <branch> was provided when the rebase operation was started,
275 then HEAD will be reset to <branch>. Otherwise HEAD will be reset
276 to where it was when the rebase operation was started.
277 --quit
279 Abort the rebase operation but HEAD is not reset back to the
280 original branch. The index and working tree are also left unchanged
281 as a result.
282 --keep-empty
284 Keep the commits that do not change anything from its parents in
285 the result.
286 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
288 --allow-empty-message
290 By default, rebasing commits with an empty message will fail. This
291 option overrides that behavior, allowing commits with empty
292 messages to be rebased.
293 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
295 --skip
297 Restart the rebasing process by skipping the current patch.
298 --edit-todo
300 Edit the todo list during an interactive rebase.
301 --show-current-patch
303 Show the current patch in an interactive rebase or when rebase is
304 stopped because of conflicts. This is the equivalent of git show
305 REBASE_HEAD.
306 -m, --merge
308 Use merging strategies to rebase. When the recursive (default)
309 merge strategy is used, this allows rebase to be aware of renames
310 on the upstream side.
311 Note that a rebase merge works by replaying each commit from the
313 working branch on top of the <upstream> branch. Because of this,
314 when a merge conflict happens, the side reported as ours is the
315 so-far rebased series, starting with <upstream>, and theirs is the
316 working branch. In other words, the sides are swapped.
317 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
319 -s <strategy>, --strategy=<strategy>
321 Use the given merge strategy. If there is no -s option git
322 merge-recursive is used instead. This implies --merge.
323 Because git rebase replays each commit from the working branch on
325 top of the <upstream> branch using the given strategy, using the
326 ours strategy simply empties all patches from the <branch>, which
327 makes little sense.
328 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
330 -X <strategy-option>, --strategy-option=<strategy-option>
332 Pass the <strategy-option> through to the merge strategy. This
333 implies --merge and, if no strategy has been specified, -s
334 recursive. Note the reversal of ours and theirs as noted above for
335 the -m option.
336 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
338 -S[<keyid>], --gpg-sign[=<keyid>]
340 GPG-sign commits. The keyid argument is optional and defaults to
341 the committer identity; if specified, it must be stuck to the
342 option without a space.
343 -q, --quiet
345 Be quiet. Implies --no-stat.
346 -v, --verbose
348 Be verbose. Implies --stat.
349 --stat
351 Show a diffstat of what changed upstream since the last rebase. The
352 diffstat is also controlled by the configuration option
353 rebase.stat.
354 -n, --no-stat
356 Do not show a diffstat as part of the rebase process.
357 --no-verify
359 This option bypasses the pre-rebase hook. See also githooks(5).
360 --verify
362 Allows the pre-rebase hook to run, which is the default. This
363 option can be used to override --no-verify. See also githooks(5).
364 -C<n>
366 Ensure at least <n> lines of surrounding context match before and
367 after each change. When fewer lines of surrounding context exist
368 they all must match. By default no context is ever ignored.
369 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
371 --no-ff, --force-rebase, -f
373 Individually replay all rebased commits instead of fast-forwarding
374 over the unchanged ones. This ensures that the entire history of
375 the rebased branch is composed of new commits.
376 You may find this helpful after reverting a topic branch merge, as
378 this option recreates the topic branch with fresh commits so it can
379 be remerged successfully without needing to "revert the reversion"
380 (see the revert-a-faulty-merge How-To[1] for details).
381 --fork-point, --no-fork-point
383 Use reflog to find a better common ancestor between <upstream> and
384 <branch> when calculating which commits have been introduced by
385 <branch>.
386 When --fork-point is active, fork_point will be used instead of
388 <upstream> to calculate the set of commits to rebase, where
389 fork_point is the result of git merge-base --fork-point <upstream>
390 <branch> command (see git-merge-base(1)). If fork_point ends up
391 being empty, the <upstream> will be used as a fallback.
392 If either <upstream> or --root is given on the command line, then
394 the default is --no-fork-point, otherwise the default is
395 --fork-point.
396 --ignore-whitespace, --whitespace=<option>
398 These flag are passed to the git apply program (see git-apply(1))
399 that applies the patch.
400 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
402 --committer-date-is-author-date, --ignore-date
404 These flags are passed to git am to easily change the dates of the
405 rebased commits (see git-am(1)).
406 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
408 --signoff
410 Add a Signed-off-by: trailer to all the rebased commits. Note that
411 if --interactive is given then only commits marked to be picked,
412 edited or reworded will have the trailer added.
413 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
415 -i, --interactive
417 Make a list of the commits which are about to be rebased. Let the
418 user edit that list before rebasing. This mode can also be used to
419 split commits (see SPLITTING COMMITS below).
420 The commit list format can be changed by setting the configuration
422 option rebase.instructionFormat. A customized instruction format
423 will automatically have the long commit hash prepended to the
424 format.
425 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
427 -r, --rebase-merges[=(rebase-cousins|no-rebase-cousins)]
429 By default, a rebase will simply drop merge commits from the todo
430 list, and put the rebased commits into a single, linear branch.
431 With --rebase-merges, the rebase will instead try to preserve the
432 branching structure within the commits that are to be rebased, by
433 recreating the merge commits. Any resolved merge conflicts or
434 manual amendments in these merge commits will have to be
435 resolved/re-applied manually.
436 By default, or when no-rebase-cousins was specified, commits which
438 do not have <upstream> as direct ancestor will keep their original
439 branch point, i.e. commits that would be excluded by
440 gitlink:git-log[1]'s --ancestry-path option will keep their
441 original ancestry by default. If the rebase-cousins mode is turned
442 on, such commits are instead rebased onto <upstream> (or <onto>, if
443 specified).
444 The --rebase-merges mode is similar in spirit to --preserve-merges,
446 but in contrast to that option works well in interactive rebases:
447 commits can be reordered, inserted and dropped at will.
448 It is currently only possible to recreate the merge commits using
450 the recursive merge strategy; Different merge strategies can be
451 used only via explicit exec git merge -s <strategy> [...]
452 commands.
453 See also REBASING MERGES and INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
455 -p, --preserve-merges
457 Recreate merge commits instead of flattening the history by
458 replaying commits a merge commit introduces. Merge conflict
459 resolutions or manual amendments to merge commits are not
460 preserved.
461 This uses the --interactive machinery internally, but combining it
463 with the --interactive option explicitly is generally not a good
464 idea unless you know what you are doing (see BUGS below).
465 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
467 -x <cmd>, --exec <cmd>
469 Append "exec <cmd>" after each line creating a commit in the final
470 history. <cmd> will be interpreted as one or more shell commands.
471 Any command that fails will interrupt the rebase, with exit code 1.
472 You may execute several commands by either using one instance of
474 --exec with several commands:
475 git rebase -i --exec "cmd1 && cmd2 && ..."
477 or by giving more than one --exec:
479 git rebase -i --exec "cmd1" --exec "cmd2" --exec ...
481 If --autosquash is used, "exec" lines will not be appended for the
483 intermediate commits, and will only appear at the end of each
484 squash/fixup series.
485 This uses the --interactive machinery internally, but it can be run
487 without an explicit --interactive.
488 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
490 --root
492 Rebase all commits reachable from <branch>, instead of limiting
493 them with an <upstream>. This allows you to rebase the root
494 commit(s) on a branch. When used with --onto, it will skip changes
495 already contained in <newbase> (instead of <upstream>) whereas
496 without --onto it will operate on every change. When used together
497 with both --onto and --preserve-merges, all root commits will be
498 rewritten to have <newbase> as parent instead.
499 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
501 --autosquash, --no-autosquash
503 When the commit log message begins with "squash! ..." (or "fixup!
504 ..."), and there is already a commit in the todo list that matches
505 the same ..., automatically modify the todo list of rebase -i so
506 that the commit marked for squashing comes right after the commit
507 to be modified, and change the action of the moved commit from pick
508 to squash (or fixup). A commit matches the ... if the commit
509 subject matches, or if the ... refers to the commit’s hash. As a
510 fall-back, partial matches of the commit subject work, too. The
511 recommended way to create fixup/squash commits is by using the
512 --fixup/--squash options of git-commit(1).
513 If the --autosquash option is enabled by default using the
515 configuration variable rebase.autoSquash, this option can be used
516 to override and disable this setting.
517 See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.
519 --autostash, --no-autostash
521 Automatically create a temporary stash entry before the operation
522 begins, and apply it after the operation ends. This means that you
523 can run rebase on a dirty worktree. However, use with care: the
524 final stash application after a successful rebase might result in
525 non-trivial conflicts.
526 --reschedule-failed-exec, --no-reschedule-failed-exec
528 Automatically reschedule exec commands that failed. This only makes
529 sense in interactive mode (or when an --exec option was provided).
530
532 The following options:
533 · --committer-date-is-author-date
535 · --ignore-date
537 · --whitespace
539 · --ignore-whitespace
541 · -C
543 are incompatible with the following options:
545 · --merge
547 · --strategy
549 · --strategy-option
551 · --allow-empty-message
553 · --[no-]autosquash
555 · --rebase-merges
557 · --preserve-merges
559 · --interactive
561 · --exec
563 · --keep-empty
565 · --edit-todo
567 · --root when used in combination with --onto
569 In addition, the following pairs of options are incompatible:
571 · --preserve-merges and --interactive
573 · --preserve-merges and --signoff
575 · --preserve-merges and --rebase-merges
577 · --rebase-merges and --strategy
579 · --rebase-merges and --strategy-option
581
583 There are some subtle differences how the backends behave.
584 Empty commits
586 The am backend drops any "empty" commits, regardless of whether the
587 commit started empty (had no changes relative to its parent to start
588 with) or ended empty (all changes were already applied upstream in
589 other commits).
590 The interactive backend drops commits by default that started empty and
592 halts if it hits a commit that ended up empty. The --keep-empty option
593 exists for the interactive backend to allow it to keep commits that
594 started empty.
595 Directory rename detection
597 Directory rename heuristics are enabled in the merge and interactive
598 backends. Due to the lack of accurate tree information, directory
599 rename detection is disabled in the am backend.
600
602 The merge mechanism (git merge and git pull commands) allows the
603 backend merge strategies to be chosen with -s option. Some strategies
604 can also take their own options, which can be passed by giving
605 -X<option> arguments to git merge and/or git pull.
606 resolve
608 This can only resolve two heads (i.e. the current branch and
609 another branch you pulled from) using a 3-way merge algorithm. It
610 tries to carefully detect criss-cross merge ambiguities and is
611 considered generally safe and fast.
612 recursive
614 This can only resolve two heads using a 3-way merge algorithm. When
615 there is more than one common ancestor that can be used for 3-way
616 merge, it creates a merged tree of the common ancestors and uses
617 that as the reference tree for the 3-way merge. This has been
618 reported to result in fewer merge conflicts without causing
619 mismerges by tests done on actual merge commits taken from Linux
620 2.6 kernel development history. Additionally this can detect and
621 handle merges involving renames, but currently cannot make use of
622 detected copies. This is the default merge strategy when pulling or
623 merging one branch.
624 The recursive strategy can take the following options:
626 ours
628 This option forces conflicting hunks to be auto-resolved
629 cleanly by favoring our version. Changes from the other tree
630 that do not conflict with our side are reflected to the merge
631 result. For a binary file, the entire contents are taken from
632 our side.
633 This should not be confused with the ours merge strategy, which
635 does not even look at what the other tree contains at all. It
636 discards everything the other tree did, declaring our history
637 contains all that happened in it.
638 theirs
640 This is the opposite of ours; note that, unlike ours, there is
641 no theirs merge strategy to confuse this merge option with.
642 patience
644 With this option, merge-recursive spends a little extra time to
645 avoid mismerges that sometimes occur due to unimportant
646 matching lines (e.g., braces from distinct functions). Use this
647 when the branches to be merged have diverged wildly. See also
648 git-diff(1) --patience.
649 diff-algorithm=[patience|minimal|histogram|myers]
651 Tells merge-recursive to use a different diff algorithm, which
652 can help avoid mismerges that occur due to unimportant matching
653 lines (such as braces from distinct functions). See also git-
654 diff(1) --diff-algorithm.
655 ignore-space-change, ignore-all-space, ignore-space-at-eol,
657 ignore-cr-at-eol
658 Treats lines with the indicated type of whitespace change as
659 unchanged for the sake of a three-way merge. Whitespace changes
660 mixed with other changes to a line are not ignored. See also
661 git-diff(1) -b, -w, --ignore-space-at-eol, and
662 --ignore-cr-at-eol.
663 · If their version only introduces whitespace changes to a
665 line, our version is used;
666 · If our version introduces whitespace changes but their
668 version includes a substantial change, their version is
669 used;
670 · Otherwise, the merge proceeds in the usual way.
672 renormalize
674 This runs a virtual check-out and check-in of all three stages
675 of a file when resolving a three-way merge. This option is
676 meant to be used when merging branches with different clean
677 filters or end-of-line normalization rules. See "Merging
678 branches with differing checkin/checkout attributes" in
679 gitattributes(5) for details.
680 no-renormalize
682 Disables the renormalize option. This overrides the
683 merge.renormalize configuration variable.
684 no-renames
686 Turn off rename detection. This overrides the merge.renames
687 configuration variable. See also git-diff(1) --no-renames.
688 find-renames[=<n>]
690 Turn on rename detection, optionally setting the similarity
691 threshold. This is the default. This overrides the
692 merge.renames configuration variable. See also git-diff(1)
693 --find-renames.
694 rename-threshold=<n>
696 Deprecated synonym for find-renames=<n>.
697 subtree[=<path>]
699 This option is a more advanced form of subtree strategy, where
700 the strategy makes a guess on how two trees must be shifted to
701 match with each other when merging. Instead, the specified path
702 is prefixed (or stripped from the beginning) to make the shape
703 of two trees to match.
704 octopus
706 This resolves cases with more than two heads, but refuses to do a
707 complex merge that needs manual resolution. It is primarily meant
708 to be used for bundling topic branch heads together. This is the
709 default merge strategy when pulling or merging more than one
710 branch.
711 ours
713 This resolves any number of heads, but the resulting tree of the
714 merge is always that of the current branch head, effectively
715 ignoring all changes from all other branches. It is meant to be
716 used to supersede old development history of side branches. Note
717 that this is different from the -Xours option to the recursive
718 merge strategy.
719 subtree
721 This is a modified recursive strategy. When merging trees A and B,
722 if B corresponds to a subtree of A, B is first adjusted to match
723 the tree structure of A, instead of reading the trees at the same
724 level. This adjustment is also done to the common ancestor tree.
725 With the strategies that use 3-way merge (including the default,
727 recursive), if a change is made on both branches, but later reverted on
728 one of the branches, that change will be present in the merged result;
729 some people find this behavior confusing. It occurs because only the
730 heads and the merge base are considered when performing a merge, not
731 the individual commits. The merge algorithm therefore considers the
732 reverted change as no change at all, and substitutes the changed
733 version instead.
734
736 You should understand the implications of using git rebase on a
737 repository that you share. See also RECOVERING FROM UPSTREAM REBASE
738 below.
739 When the git-rebase command is run, it will first execute a
741 "pre-rebase" hook if one exists. You can use this hook to do sanity
742 checks and reject the rebase if it isn’t appropriate. Please see the
743 template pre-rebase hook script for an example.
744 Upon completion, <branch> will be the current branch.
746
748 Rebasing interactively means that you have a chance to edit the commits
749 which are rebased. You can reorder the commits, and you can remove them
750 (weeding out bad or otherwise unwanted patches).
751 The interactive mode is meant for this type of workflow:
753 1. have a wonderful idea
755 2. hack on the code
757 3. prepare a series for submission
759 4. submit
761 where point 2. consists of several instances of
763 a) regular use
765 1. finish something worthy of a commit
767 2. commit
769 b) independent fixup
771 1. realize that something does not work
773 2. fix that
775 3. commit it
777 Sometimes the thing fixed in b.2. cannot be amended to the not-quite
779 perfect commit it fixes, because that commit is buried deeply in a
780 patch series. That is exactly what interactive rebase is for: use it
781 after plenty of "a"s and "b"s, by rearranging and editing commits, and
782 squashing multiple commits into one.
783 Start it with the last commit you want to retain as-is:
785 git rebase -i <after-this-commit>
787 An editor will be fired up with all the commits in your current branch
789 (ignoring merge commits), which come after the given commit. You can
790 reorder the commits in this list to your heart’s content, and you can
791 remove them. The list looks more or less like this:
792 pick deadbee The oneline of this commit
794 pick fa1afe1 The oneline of the next commit
795 ...
796 The oneline descriptions are purely for your pleasure; git rebase will
799 not look at them but at the commit names ("deadbee" and "fa1afe1" in
800 this example), so do not delete or edit the names.
801 By replacing the command "pick" with the command "edit", you can tell
803 git rebase to stop after applying that commit, so that you can edit the
804 files and/or the commit message, amend the commit, and continue
805 rebasing.
806 To interrupt the rebase (just like an "edit" command would do, but
808 without cherry-picking any commit first), use the "break" command.
809 If you just want to edit the commit message for a commit, replace the
811 command "pick" with the command "reword".
812 To drop a commit, replace the command "pick" with "drop", or just
814 delete the matching line.
815 If you want to fold two or more commits into one, replace the command
817 "pick" for the second and subsequent commits with "squash" or "fixup".
818 If the commits had different authors, the folded commit will be
819 attributed to the author of the first commit. The suggested commit
820 message for the folded commit is the concatenation of the commit
821 messages of the first commit and of those with the "squash" command,
822 but omits the commit messages of commits with the "fixup" command.
823 git rebase will stop when "pick" has been replaced with "edit" or when
825 a command fails due to merge errors. When you are done editing and/or
826 resolving conflicts you can continue with git rebase --continue.
827 For example, if you want to reorder the last 5 commits, such that what
829 was HEAD~4 becomes the new HEAD. To achieve that, you would call git
830 rebase like this:
831 $ git rebase -i HEAD~5
833 And move the first patch to the end of the list.
836 You might want to preserve merges, if you have a history like this:
838 X
840 \
841 A---M---B
842 /
843 ---o---O---P---Q
844 Suppose you want to rebase the side branch starting at "A" to "Q". Make
847 sure that the current HEAD is "B", and call
848 $ git rebase -i -p --onto Q O
850 Reordering and editing commits usually creates untested intermediate
853 steps. You may want to check that your history editing did not break
854 anything by running a test, or at least recompiling at intermediate
855 points in history by using the "exec" command (shortcut "x"). You may
856 do so by creating a todo list like this one:
857 pick deadbee Implement feature XXX
859 fixup f1a5c00 Fix to feature XXX
860 exec make
861 pick c0ffeee The oneline of the next commit
862 edit deadbab The oneline of the commit after
863 exec cd subdir; make test
864 ...
865 The interactive rebase will stop when a command fails (i.e. exits with
868 non-0 status) to give you an opportunity to fix the problem. You can
869 continue with git rebase --continue.
870 The "exec" command launches the command in a shell (the one specified
872 in $SHELL, or the default shell if $SHELL is not set), so you can use
873 shell features (like "cd", ">", ";" ...). The command is run from the
874 root of the working tree.
875 $ git rebase -i --exec "make test"
877 This command lets you check that intermediate commits are compilable.
880 The todo list becomes like that:
881 pick 5928aea one
883 exec make test
884 pick 04d0fda two
885 exec make test
886 pick ba46169 three
887 exec make test
888 pick f4593f9 four
889 exec make test
890
893 In interactive mode, you can mark commits with the action "edit".
894 However, this does not necessarily mean that git rebase expects the
895 result of this edit to be exactly one commit. Indeed, you can undo the
896 commit, or you can add other commits. This can be used to split a
897 commit into two:
898 · Start an interactive rebase with git rebase -i <commit>^, where
900 <commit> is the commit you want to split. In fact, any commit range
901 will do, as long as it contains that commit.
902 · Mark the commit you want to split with the action "edit".
904 · When it comes to editing that commit, execute git reset HEAD^. The
906 effect is that the HEAD is rewound by one, and the index follows
907 suit. However, the working tree stays the same.
908 · Now add the changes to the index that you want to have in the first
910 commit. You can use git add (possibly interactively) or git gui (or
911 both) to do that.
912 · Commit the now-current index with whatever commit message is
914 appropriate now.
915 · Repeat the last two steps until your working tree is clean.
917 · Continue the rebase with git rebase --continue.
919 If you are not absolutely sure that the intermediate revisions are
921 consistent (they compile, pass the testsuite, etc.) you should use git
922 stash to stash away the not-yet-committed changes after each commit,
923 test, and amend the commit if fixes are necessary.
924
926 Rebasing (or any other form of rewriting) a branch that others have
927 based work on is a bad idea: anyone downstream of it is forced to
928 manually fix their history. This section explains how to do the fix
929 from the downstream’s point of view. The real fix, however, would be to
930 avoid rebasing the upstream in the first place.
931 To illustrate, suppose you are in a situation where someone develops a
933 subsystem branch, and you are working on a topic that is dependent on
934 this subsystem. You might end up with a history like the following:
935 o---o---o---o---o---o---o---o master
937 \
938 o---o---o---o---o subsystem
939 \
940 *---*---* topic
941 If subsystem is rebased against master, the following happens:
944 o---o---o---o---o---o---o---o master
946 \ \
947 o---o---o---o---o o'--o'--o'--o'--o' subsystem
948 \
949 *---*---* topic
950 If you now continue development as usual, and eventually merge topic to
953 subsystem, the commits from subsystem will remain duplicated forever:
954 o---o---o---o---o---o---o---o master
956 \ \
957 o---o---o---o---o o'--o'--o'--o'--o'--M subsystem
958 \ /
959 *---*---*-..........-*--* topic
960 Such duplicates are generally frowned upon because they clutter up
963 history, making it harder to follow. To clean things up, you need to
964 transplant the commits on topic to the new subsystem tip, i.e., rebase
965 topic. This becomes a ripple effect: anyone downstream from topic is
966 forced to rebase too, and so on!
967 There are two kinds of fixes, discussed in the following subsections:
969 Easy case: The changes are literally the same.
971 This happens if the subsystem rebase was a simple rebase and had no
972 conflicts.
973 Hard case: The changes are not the same.
975 This happens if the subsystem rebase had conflicts, or used
976 --interactive to omit, edit, squash, or fixup commits; or if the
977 upstream used one of commit --amend, reset, or filter-branch.
978 The easy case
980 Only works if the changes (patch IDs based on the diff contents) on
981 subsystem are literally the same before and after the rebase subsystem
982 did.
983 In that case, the fix is easy because git rebase knows to skip changes
985 that are already present in the new upstream. So if you say (assuming
986 you’re on topic)
987 $ git rebase subsystem
989 you will end up with the fixed history
992 o---o---o---o---o---o---o---o master
994 \
995 o'--o'--o'--o'--o' subsystem
996 \
997 *---*---* topic
998 The hard case
1001 Things get more complicated if the subsystem changes do not exactly
1002 correspond to the ones before the rebase.
1003 Note
1005 While an "easy case recovery" sometimes appears to be successful
1006 even in the hard case, it may have unintended consequences. For
1007 example, a commit that was removed via git rebase --interactive
1008 will be resurrected!
1009 The idea is to manually tell git rebase "where the old subsystem ended
1011 and your topic began", that is, what the old merge-base between them
1012 was. You will have to find a way to name the last commit of the old
1013 subsystem, for example:
1014 · With the subsystem reflog: after git fetch, the old tip of
1016 subsystem is at subsystem@{1}. Subsequent fetches will increase the
1017 number. (See git-reflog(1).)
1018 · Relative to the tip of topic: knowing that your topic has three
1020 commits, the old tip of subsystem must be topic~3.
1021 You can then transplant the old subsystem..topic to the new tip by
1023 saying (for the reflog case, and assuming you are on topic already):
1024 $ git rebase --onto subsystem subsystem@{1}
1026 The ripple effect of a "hard case" recovery is especially bad: everyone
1029 downstream from topic will now have to perform a "hard case" recovery
1030 too!
1031
1033 The interactive rebase command was originally designed to handle
1034 individual patch series. As such, it makes sense to exclude merge
1035 commits from the todo list, as the developer may have merged the
1036 then-current master while working on the branch, only to rebase all the
1037 commits onto master eventually (skipping the merge commits).
1038 However, there are legitimate reasons why a developer may want to
1040 recreate merge commits: to keep the branch structure (or "commit
1041 topology") when working on multiple, inter-related branches.
1042 In the following example, the developer works on a topic branch that
1044 refactors the way buttons are defined, and on another topic branch that
1045 uses that refactoring to implement a "Report a bug" button. The output
1046 of git log --graph --format=%s -5 may look like this:
1047 * Merge branch 'report-a-bug'
1049 |\
1050 | * Add the feedback button
1051 * | Merge branch 'refactor-button'
1052 |\ \
1053 | |/
1054 | * Use the Button class for all buttons
1055 | * Extract a generic Button class from the DownloadButton one
1056 The developer might want to rebase those commits to a newer master
1059 while keeping the branch topology, for example when the first topic
1060 branch is expected to be integrated into master much earlier than the
1061 second one, say, to resolve merge conflicts with changes to the
1062 DownloadButton class that made it into master.
1063 This rebase can be performed using the --rebase-merges option. It will
1065 generate a todo list looking like this:
1066 label onto
1068 # Branch: refactor-button
1070 reset onto
1071 pick 123456 Extract a generic Button class from the DownloadButton one
1072 pick 654321 Use the Button class for all buttons
1073 label refactor-button
1074 # Branch: report-a-bug
1076 reset refactor-button # Use the Button class for all buttons
1077 pick abcdef Add the feedback button
1078 label report-a-bug
1079 reset onto
1081 merge -C a1b2c3 refactor-button # Merge 'refactor-button'
1082 merge -C 6f5e4d report-a-bug # Merge 'report-a-bug'
1083 In contrast to a regular interactive rebase, there are label, reset and
1086 merge commands in addition to pick ones.
1087 The label command associates a label with the current HEAD when that
1089 command is executed. These labels are created as worktree-local refs
1090 (refs/rewritten/<label>) that will be deleted when the rebase finishes.
1091 That way, rebase operations in multiple worktrees linked to the same
1092 repository do not interfere with one another. If the label command
1093 fails, it is rescheduled immediately, with a helpful message how to
1094 proceed.
1095 The reset command resets the HEAD, index and worktree to the specified
1097 revision. It is similar to an exec git reset --hard <label>, but
1098 refuses to overwrite untracked files. If the reset command fails, it is
1099 rescheduled immediately, with a helpful message how to edit the todo
1100 list (this typically happens when a reset command was inserted into the
1101 todo list manually and contains a typo).
1102 The merge command will merge the specified revision(s) into whatever is
1104 HEAD at that time. With -C <original-commit>, the commit message of the
1105 specified merge commit will be used. When the -C is changed to a
1106 lower-case -c, the message will be opened in an editor after a
1107 successful merge so that the user can edit the message.
1108 If a merge command fails for any reason other than merge conflicts
1110 (i.e. when the merge operation did not even start), it is rescheduled
1111 immediately.
1112 At this time, the merge command will always use the recursive merge
1114 strategy for regular merges, and octopus for octopus merges, with no
1115 way to choose a different one. To work around this, an exec command can
1116 be used to call git merge explicitly, using the fact that the labels
1117 are worktree-local refs (the ref refs/rewritten/onto would correspond
1118 to the label onto, for example).
1119 Note: the first command (label onto) labels the revision onto which the
1121 commits are rebased; The name onto is just a convention, as a nod to
1122 the --onto option.
1123 It is also possible to introduce completely new merge commits from
1125 scratch by adding a command of the form merge <merge-head>. This form
1126 will generate a tentative commit message and always open an editor to
1127 let the user edit it. This can be useful e.g. when a topic branch turns
1128 out to address more than a single concern and wants to be split into
1129 two or even more topic branches. Consider this todo list:
1130 pick 192837 Switch from GNU Makefiles to CMake
1132 pick 5a6c7e Document the switch to CMake
1133 pick 918273 Fix detection of OpenSSL in CMake
1134 pick afbecd http: add support for TLS v1.3
1135 pick fdbaec Fix detection of cURL in CMake on Windows
1136 The one commit in this list that is not related to CMake may very well
1139 have been motivated by working on fixing all those bugs introduced by
1140 switching to CMake, but it addresses a different concern. To split this
1141 branch into two topic branches, the todo list could be edited like
1142 this:
1143 label onto
1145 pick afbecd http: add support for TLS v1.3
1147 label tlsv1.3
1148 reset onto
1150 pick 192837 Switch from GNU Makefiles to CMake
1151 pick 918273 Fix detection of OpenSSL in CMake
1152 pick fdbaec Fix detection of cURL in CMake on Windows
1153 pick 5a6c7e Document the switch to CMake
1154 label cmake
1155 reset onto
1157 merge tlsv1.3
1158 merge cmake
1159
1162 The todo list presented by --preserve-merges --interactive does not
1163 represent the topology of the revision graph. Editing commits and
1164 rewording their commit messages should work fine, but attempts to
1165 reorder commits tend to produce counterintuitive results. Use
1166 --rebase-merges in such scenarios instead.
1167 For example, an attempt to rearrange
1169 1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5
1171 to
1174 1 --- 2 --- 4 --- 3 --- 5
1176 by moving the "pick 4" line will result in the following history:
1179 3
1181 /
1182 1 --- 2 --- 4 --- 5
1183
1186 Part of the git(1) suite
1187
1189 1. revert-a-faulty-merge How-To
1190 file:///usr/share/doc/git/howto/revert-a-faulty-merge.html
1191Git 2.21.0 02/24/2019 GIT-REBASE(1)