From: Max Kirillov Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2015 21:53:54 GMT Subject: Re: RFC: Renaming "git rebase --onto" Message-ID: <20150330215354.GB8771@wheezy.local> In-Reply-To: <05D9209E-FAA2-44C8-9B98-B00997AF5779@JonathonMah.com> On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 01:49:34PM -0700, Jonathon Mah wrote: > During a few years of discussing git operations with colleagues, I’ve found the “git rebase --onto” operation particularly ambiguous. The reason is that I always describe a rebase operation as “onto” something else (because of the English phrase “A is based on B”). For example: > > $ git rebase new-base # “Rebase HEAD onto new-base (from merge-base of HEAD and new-base)" > $ git rebase new-base my-branch # “Rebase my-branch onto new-base (from merge-base of my-branch and new-base)” > > Personally, I understand “git-rebase --onto new-base old-base” as meaning “rebase from old-base to new-base”. Some prepositions that might make this clearer: > > $ git rebase --from old-base new-base # “Rebase HEAD onto new-base, from old-base" > $ git rebase --after old-base new-base # “Rebase commits on HEAD after old-base HEAD onto new-base" > $ git rebase --excluding old-base new-base # “Rebase HEAD onto new-base, excluding commit old-base (and its parents)" > > In all cases this would change the order of the arguments compared to --onto, making it more consistent with the no-option rebase. > > What do others think? Is my view of “onto” common or unusual? I have never liked the --onto syntax also. It's not only ugly but still fails to cover some needs. So in my, you know, clone of rebase I have made completely different syntax. You can take a look at it here: https://github.com/max630/git-rebase2/#usage I just copy the line here, without descriptions: git rebase2 [options] [[]..[..]..[]] [] -- Max