[BUG] rebase -i with only empty commits

From: Stephan Beyer <s-beyer@gmx.net>
Date: Aug 23, 2017, 09:08 UTC
Message-ID: <36e9c381-81b0-ae71-153a-0bcabc59856c@gmx.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAGZ79kYinci-OWXV2VfScLPcUDCHyhSb=7TxTWUWHPnKV5PuDA@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On 08/23/2017 01:08 AM, Stefan Beller wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> The editor opened proposing the following instruction sheet,
> which in my opinion is buggy:
> 
>     pick 1234 some commit
>     exec make
>     pick 2345 another commit
>     exec make
>     pick 3456 third commit
>     # pick 4567 empty commit
>     exec make
>     pick 5678  yet another commit
>     exec make

This reminds me of another bug I stumbled over recently regarding empty commits.

Do this:
	# repo preparation:
	git init
	:> file1
	git add file1
	git commit -m "add file1"
	:> file2
	git add file2
	git commit -m "add file2"

	# the bug:
	git checkout -b to-be-rebased master^
	git commit --allow-empty -m "empty commit"
	git rebase -i master

It says "Nothing to do". Unsurprisingly, the problem persists when you apply other empty commits:

	git commit --allow-empty -m "another empty commit"
	git rebase -i master

Adding a "real" commit solves the problem:

	:>file3
	git add file3
	git commit -m "add file3"

Adding further empty commits is no problem:

	git commit --allow-empty -m "yet another empty commit"

So the problem seems to be that rebase -i (like rebase without -i) considers "empty commits" as commits to be ignored. However, when using rebase -i one expects that you can include the empty commit...

Also, the behavior is odd. When I only have empty commits, a "git rebase master" works as expected like a "git reset --hard master" but "git rebase -i" does nothing.

The expected behavior would be that the editor shows up with a
git-rebase-todo like:
	# pick 3d0f6c49 empty commit
	# pick bbbc5941 another empty commit
	noop

Thanks Stephan