# Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence? 6 messages from 2026-07-03 to 2026-07-08. Participants: Matthias Beyer, Michal Suchánek, brian m. carlson, Matt Hunter, D. Ben Knoble, Johannes Schindelin. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/65919 ## Matthias Beyer, 2026-07-03 12:02 Subject: Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence? Message-ID: ``` Hi git people, in a recent conversation at work, the question of how to programmatically edit the git-rebase sequence came up. Example use case: I have a branch that touches a number of files, adds some files and removes some files. When rebasing, I want to split all commits that touched a certain subset of files, for the clearity of the history. I look at the output of git log master..mybranch --oneline --diff-filter=M -- "./subdir/*.rs" to find all commits in that subdir that only touched the files. All of these commits are to be "edit"ed. Now I fire up `git rebase -i master` and manually(!) match the list from above `git-log` call and find the respective commits to edit them. Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically? Something like git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")" would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-) Maybe I am just not aware of the obvious solution - I would be happy to learn that there is already one! Best, Matthias ``` ## Michal Suchánek, 2026-07-03 12:17 Subject: Re: Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence? Message-ID: In-Reply-To: ``` On Fri, Jul 03, 2026 at 02:02:33PM +0200, Matthias Beyer wrote: > Hi git people, > > in a recent conversation at work, the question of how to > programmatically edit the git-rebase sequence came up. > > Example use case: > > I have a branch that touches a number of files, adds some files and > removes some files. > When rebasing, I want to split all commits that touched a certain subset > of files, for the clearity of the history. > > I look at the output of > > git log master..mybranch --oneline --diff-filter=M -- "./subdir/*.rs" > > to find all commits in that subdir that only touched the files. All of > these commits are to be "edit"ed. > > Now I fire up `git rebase -i master` and manually(!) match the list from > above `git-log` call and find the respective commits to edit them. > > Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically? > Something like > > git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")" > > would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too > much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-) > > Maybe I am just not aware of the obvious solution - I would be happy to > learn that there is already one! Hello, you could probably set a script as EDITOR (environment variable). Not great for one-off scripts I guess. Thanks Michal ``` ## brian m. carlson, 2026-07-03 13:42 Subject: Re: Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence? Message-ID: In-Reply-To: ``` On 2026-07-03 at 12:02:33, Matthias Beyer wrote: > Hi git people, > > in a recent conversation at work, the question of how to > programmatically edit the git-rebase sequence came up. > > Example use case: > > I have a branch that touches a number of files, adds some files and > removes some files. > When rebasing, I want to split all commits that touched a certain subset > of files, for the clearity of the history. > > I look at the output of > > git log master..mybranch --oneline --diff-filter=M -- "./subdir/*.rs" > > to find all commits in that subdir that only touched the files. All of > these commits are to be "edit"ed. > > Now I fire up `git rebase -i master` and manually(!) match the list from > above `git-log` call and find the respective commits to edit them. > > Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically? > Something like > > git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")" > > would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too > much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-) Yes, such a thing exists. You want `GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR`, which is an `EDITOR`-like command that edits the rebase list in place. So tools like `ed`, `ex`, `sed -i`, `perl -i`, or `ruby -i` would be useful here. So you might want something like this (untested): GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR="perl -pi -e 's/^pick ($(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%h" -- "./subdir/*.rs" | paste -d '\''|'\'' -s -))/edit \$1/'" \ git rebase -i master Note the use of `%h`, since by default the object IDs are abbreviated. If you want something simpler, you can also write a shell script which edits the first argument in place and specify that. Arbitrary shell is allowed in `GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR`, much like in `EDITOR` and `VISUAL`. I personally use this alias, which explicitly does not edit the sequence list, to automatically squash in all squash and fixup commits without prompting: srebase = "!f() { GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR=true git rebase -m -i --autosquash \"$@\"; };f" -- brian m. carlson (they/them) Toronto, Ontario, CA ``` ## Matt Hunter, 2026-07-03 14:33 Subject: Re: Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence? Message-ID: In-Reply-To: ``` On Fri Jul 3, 2026 at 9:42 AM EDT, brian m. carlson wrote: > On 2026-07-03 at 12:02:33, Matthias Beyer wrote: >> >> Now I fire up `git rebase -i master` and manually(!) match the list from >> above `git-log` call and find the respective commits to edit them. >> >> Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically? >> Something like >> >> git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")" >> >> would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too >> much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-) > > Yes, such a thing exists. You want `GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR`, which is an > `EDITOR`-like command that edits the rebase list in place. So tools > like `ed`, `ex`, `sed -i`, `perl -i`, or `ruby -i` would be useful here. Interesting tip - thanks! > > I personally use this alias, which explicitly does not edit the sequence > list, to automatically squash in all squash and fixup commits without > prompting: > > srebase = "!f() { GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR=true git rebase -m -i --autosquash \"$@\"; };f" 'git rebase --autosquash' does work now without the need to invoke --interactive mode. I believe we got this with f8f87e082798 (Merge branch 'ak/rebase-autosquash') ``` ## D. Ben Knoble, 2026-07-03 15:31 Subject: Re: Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence? Message-ID: In-Reply-To: ``` On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 9:46 AM brian m. carlson wrote: > > On 2026-07-03 at 12:02:33, Matthias Beyer wrote: > > Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically? > > Something like > > > > git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")" > > > > would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too > > much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-) > > Yes, such a thing exists. You want `GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR`, which is an > `EDITOR`-like command that edits the rebase list in place. So tools > like `ed`, `ex`, `sed -i`, `perl -i`, or `ruby -i` would be useful here. > > So you might want something like this (untested): > > GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR="perl -pi -e 's/^pick ($(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%h" -- "./subdir/*.rs" | paste -d '\''|'\'' -s -))/edit \$1/'" \ > git rebase -i master Yep. Although, the last time I wrote a program that used GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR, I had to deal with enough shell-nesting that it was more convenient to make the editor program separate: - git-split-topic [1] sets up a sequence editor with some interpolated arguments that also re-invokes the original - split-topic-editor [2] pre-processes the rebase script with ed [1]: https://github.com/benknoble/Dotfiles/blob/ca48a09f783b78e038a41c5d60ee6b163337f580/links/bin/git-split-topic#L47-L53 [2]: https://github.com/benknoble/Dotfiles/blob/master/links/bin/split-topic-editor See the comments in [1] for some weirdness in the invocation of the sequence editor, where it gets "$@" appended to the command string (meaning the last command in a chain might need to be written specially). And yes, I'm sure there's a few ways for things to go wrong with the way some of the shell script variables are embedded into strings for another shell to evaluate later; if I rewrote with Zsh, I could at least use the ${(q)var} forms to perhaps handle that better… -- D. Ben Knoble ``` ## Johannes Schindelin, 2026-07-08 17:58 Subject: Re: Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence? Message-ID: <32e8c83a-69f3-8ef3-8d9c-f9860fda2fbb@gmx.de> In-Reply-To: ``` Hi Matthias, On Fri, 3 Jul 2026, Matthias Beyer wrote: > in a recent conversation at work, the question of how to > programmatically edit the git-rebase sequence came up. The easiest way is probably to have the interactive rebase stop at the top of the rebase script: # insert a `b` (for `break`) before the first line GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR="sed -i 1ib" git rebase -i ... (Note that this is GNU sed syntax, with BSD/macOS sed you'll have to get a bit creative, or write a real script and refer to it via the path.) Then you can use a script to transform the rebase script before `git rebase --continue`. I frequently use this technique with LLMs because they seem to be unable to control an interactive editor correctly. > I have a branch that touches a number of files, adds some files and > removes some files. > When rebasing, I want to split all commits that touched a certain subset > of files, for the clearity of the history. > > I look at the output of > > git log master..mybranch --oneline --diff-filter=M -- "./subdir/*.rs" Noting that the OIDs in $(git rev-parse --git-path rebase-merge/git-rebase-todo) are expanded, you could match them via the OIDs obtained using `rev-list` instead of `log`, to enumerate the OIDs instead of full commit history, then turning that into some kind of regex. Something along the lines regex=$(git rev-list master..mybranch --diff-filter=M -- "subdir/*.rs" | # read all lines, then turn newlines into `\|` sed ':1;$b2;N;b1;:2;s/\n/\\|/g') GIT_REBASE_TODO="$(git rev-parse --git-path rebase-merge/git-rebase-todo)" test -z "$regex" || sed -i "s/^pick \($regex\)/edit \1/" $GIT_REBASE_TODO This _should_ work, but you'll most likely want to adapt it to your particular use cases. Ciao, Johannes > > to find all commits in that subdir that only touched the files. All of > these commits are to be "edit"ed. > > Now I fire up `git rebase -i master` and manually(!) match the list from > above `git-log` call and find the respective commits to edit them. > > Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically? > Something like > > git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")" > > would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too > much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-) > > Maybe I am just not aware of the obvious solution - I would be happy to > learn that there is already one! > > Best, > Matthias > ```