Re: Feature request: rebase -i inside of rebase -i

From: George Spelvin <lkml@sdf.org>
Date: Apr 7, 2020, 19:03 UTC
Message-ID: <20200407190339.GA20902@SDF.ORG>
In-Reply-To: <CA+KXf2A7L1fRC3+rmDaME186CYf4yS+-dBgy_FkEFVh887N7MA@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Apr 07, 2020 at 05:16:50AM -0400, Sebastien Bruckert wrote:

> Hmmm so you need some way to move C before your actual commit. To make
> it like a pseudo command, some kind of "git rebase --reattach C
> --after A"? This seems closer to your original idea.

That seems too special-purpose and hard to remember. The standard rebase -i operation (generate a todo list and drop me into an editor) is perfectly adequate and more familiar. This is a very manual operation, after all. ("-i" for "interactive" means "manual".)

Show 23 quoted lines

> Or why not modify "--edit-todo" to get commits from before your actual
> point? It could works like this:
> 
> Before:
> ```
> #pick b2a96fe O
> #pick acb7459 A
> #pick 0dac4a4 B
> edit 1f54e51 C
> edit cda2a7e D
> ```
> 
> After:
> ```
> #pick b2a96fe O
> edit 1f54e51 C
> pick acb7459 A
> pick 0dac4a4 B
> edit cda2a7e D
> ```
> 
> So that you are still at C, but keeping the changes you made before on
> A and B, and going through them only if you have conflicts.

Because the only reason this is interesting assumes that A and B have changed! If I didn't intend to modify A somehow, I wouldn't have included it in the rebase range. They're now edited patches A' and B'. So the state I want to get to is:

#pick b2a96fe O #pick acb7459 A #pick 0dac4a4 B reset b2a96fe O edit 1f54e51 C pick 7f0bcab A' pick fcd3c62 B' edit cda2a7e D

where it will pick the versions of A and B that include the edits I've already made.

Now, having the original commits mentioned in comments is useful, in case I made a mess of the edit and want to revert it. E.g. I can certainly see realizing, three commits later in the rebase, that I recolved a conflict wrong and should re-do it. Although this can probably be handled with a fixup.