Re: rebase -i: quick/inline reword

From: Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com>
Date: May 7, 2020, 10:49 UTC
Message-ID: <87imh8m346.fsf@osv.gnss.ru>
In-Reply-To: <CANtMP6oKN6Ueu=fqFYv2VhUP5S-ifbSzPTARvbEg4eV0pcRcHw@mail.gmail.com>

Solomon Ucko <solly.ucko@gmail.com> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Currently, `rebase -i` allows modifying the commit titles in the list, and
> the modified title is shown in the lists of previous and next commands, but
> the changes are not saved. Currently, modifying just the titles of many
> commits requires `reword`ing each one and separately and consecutively editing
> each message, which is annoying when making small, repetitive edits, especially
> since it requires double-checking each one separately. It would be much easier
> if there were a mode where any changes to the commit titles in the list
> modified the commits' titles. Maybe `git rebase -i --reword`?
>
> Any thoughts, suggestions, questions, etc.?

Yes, thanks for raising the issue!

I've needed the feature many times myself, but then, as Junio already described in his reply, I realized it's likely a no-go with current design of the todo lists. Changing just the titles probably still could be implemented in a useful way (as with your --reword suggestion), but its application is in fact rather limited, so maybe isn't worth the trouble.

It'd be really nice if it were possible to, say, search&replace in, or spell-check, interactively, all the commit messages (including titles) of a bunch of commits to be published, all in a single file handled by single rebase run.

This is a feature that I'd like to see being considered if and when we decide to design a history editing feature that is more powerful than current dos-batch-files-alike processing enhanced with comefrom labels.

-- Sergey