I've been doing a lot of interactive rebases lately, and I often edit a commit, continue to the next step of the rebase, and then realise theres' a change a forgot to make.
Now usually, when I forget to do something in a commit, I do "git rebase -ir <bad-commit>", and then change the first "pick" line to "edit". Make changes, then "git add -u && git rebase --continue".
Unfortunately, if I'm already in the process of a rebase it doesn't work: you can't have nested rebases.
I suggest removing this limitation, basically the idea is that if you do "git rebase" while you are already rebasing, it performs the following:
* it computes a new todo list as normal, and then prepends it to the current todo list
* it does a 'git reset --hard <start point>' like normal
Obviously there needs to be some limitations (e.g. it will probably only work on the merge backend).
If anyone knows of any tools that let you do this, it would be great.
If people think it's likely to be accepted, I may make the changes to git myself to do this, but otherwise it's less work for me to just write a wrapper shell script with the features I actually might use.
In particular, the rest of this email is a fish script which demonstrates that one can actually do this:
# This will likely not work properly in many cases, it's just a proof of concept
if test (count $argv) -lt 1
echo "USAGE: double-rebase <upstream> [<branch> [<new base> <rebase options>...]]"
echo "which is like \"git rebase <upstream> <branch> --onto <new base> --interactive <rebase options>\"."
echo "but for when you are already in a rebase"
exit 1; end
# Same defaults as git rebase
if not set -q argv[2]
set argv[2] HEAD; end
if not set -q argv[3]
set argv[3] $argv[1]; end
set MAIN (git rev-parse --git-path rebase-merge)
if not test -e $MAIN
echo "fatal: rebase --merge not in progress"
exit 1; end
# Make a backup of the current rebase
set BACKUP (git rev-parse --git-path rebase-backup)
if test -e $BACKUP
echo "fatal: $BACKUP already exists (did a previouse double-rebase crash?)"; end
mv $MAIN $BACKUP || exit
# This 'GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR' command will print the file to stdout, with
# lines starting with a # striped, and then blank the file.
# Because the file gets blanked, git rebase won't actually do anything
# to the repo.
GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR="f () { rg -v '^#' \"\$@\"; echo > \"\$@\"; }; f" \
git rebase -i $argv[4..] --onto=$argv[2] -- $argv[1] $argv[2] > $BACKUP/double-rebase-todo 2>$BACKUP/double-rebase-err
mv $BACKUP $MAIN || exit
# If the above rebase print anything to stderr other than an error about the file, being empty, something when wrong
set -l stat $status
if not diff -q $MAIN/double-rebase-err (echo "error: nothing to do" | psub)>/dev/null
cat $MAIN/double-rebase-err >&2
exit $stat
end
# Stupid hack to make the new labels unique
set new_labels (rg '^\s*(l|label)\s+([^ \t#]+)' -or '$2' $MAIN/double-rebase-todo)
set old_labels (rg "^\s*(l|label)\s+([^ \t#]+)" -or '$2' $MAIN/git-rebase-todo)
set fresh_labels $new_labels
# One of the new_labels is already in use, make a new version
while string match -qr '^('(string join '|' -- $old_labels)')$' -- $fresh_labels
set I (math $I + 1)
set fresh_labels $new_labels$I
end
# Change to the new labels
if test $I -gt 0
rg '^\s*(l|label|t|reset)\s+([^ \t#]+)' -r '$1 ${2}'$I $MAIN/double-rebase-todo | sponge $MAIN/double-rebase-todo
end
# Go to the <new base>
git reset --hard $argv[3] || exit
# Prepend the new todo list to the existing one
cat $MAIN/double-rebase-todo $MAIN/git-rebase-todo | sponge $MAIN/git-rebase-todo || exit
# Bassically act like git rebase -i would, except use the todo list we just constructed
git rebase --edit-todo && git checkout $argv[2] && git rebase --continue
— Isaac Oscar Gariano
