Re: [PATCH RFC v2 00/16] Introduce git-history(1) command for easy history editing

From: D. Ben Knoble <ben.knoble@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 3, 2025, 23:39 UTC
Message-ID: <CALnO6CC5K81QRxJR3jvqyL+fO6Yec_Ee83EOeeiUEzF6oBV3UA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20250824-b4-pks-history-builtin-v2-0-964ac12f65bd@pks.im>

On Sun, Aug 24, 2025 at 1:42 PM Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Changes in v2:
>   - Add a new "reword" subcommand.
>   - List git-history(1) in "command-list.txt".
>   - Add some missing error handling.
>   - Simplify calling convention of `apply_commits()` to handle root
>     commits internally instead of requiring every caller to do so.
>   - Add tests to verify that git-history(1) refuses to work with changes
>     in the worktree or index.
>   - Mark git-history(1) as experimental.
>   - Introduce commands to manage interrupted history edits.
>   - A bunch of improvements to the manpage.
>   - Link to v1: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250819-b4-pks-history-builtin-v1-0-9b77c32688fe@pks.im

Having test-driven this a bit, I wanted to mention a feature from my editor that I use frequently and that "reword" reminded me of [*]. I wonder if this would be a good fit for git-history, but certainly wouldn't be _necessary_ for a v1.

With fugitive.vim [1], I can get a list of {staged,unstaged} changes and commits. It looks something like this

Head: ps-jj
Rebase: origin/master
Push: benknoble/ps-jj
Help: g?

Unstaged (1) M README.md

Unpushed to origin/master (16) 5c65c405e6 builtin/history: implement "reword" subcommand b215e38d49 builtin/history: implement "split" subcommand 93977ef8d2 wt-status: provide function to expose status for trees b09b4b9d48 add-patch: add support for in-memory index patching […]

If I stage changes, then the following mappings are available when the cursor is on any commit line:

cF                      Create a `fixup!` commit for the commit under the
                        cursor and immediately rebase it.

cS                      Create a `squash!` commit for the commit under the
                        cursor and immediately rebase it.

What they do is populate my command line with something like

:Git commit --fixup=<commit>|Git -c sequence.editor=true rebase --interactive --autosquash <commit>^

(The pipe is Vim's command separator, a bit like ";" or "&&" in shell.)

If git-history had a squash or fixup mode, I imagine it would function similarly (and could be used as the backend for fugitive's cF/cS with new enough Git).

[*] The reason I thought of this from "reword" is the obvious tie-in to interactive rebase commands. Fugitive does have "cw" to reword the last commit, "ca" to amend, and "cW" to "amend!" an arbitrary commit, but no mappings that "amend!" + rebase immediately. It doesn't need them because "rw" starts an interactive rebase with the commit under cursor set to "reword" ;) likewise "rd" for drop.

[1]: https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive

-- 
D. Ben Knoble