Re: Git Feature Request (Fixdown in interactive rebase)

From: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Date: Dec 23, 2020, 23:25 UTC
Message-ID: <X+PR6yms1G9zVcML@camp.crustytoothpaste.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAM0jFOdCD1uEcHaPB_go7aarapEBKx6M4d35zVOP8h9=MuZEmA@mail.gmail.com>

On 2020-12-23 at 23:08:58, Mike McLean wrote:

> I initially raised this as a FR with my git UI of choice, and was told
> that it was actually something that git itself would need to do ...
> and that the standard way to raise Feature Requests was to email this
> list.

This is absolutely the right place.

Show 11 quoted lines

> During an interactive rebase, the text file defining the operations
> has a command option for "fixup".
> This will squash the target commit into the previous commit (listed
> above it in the file), and automatically use the commit message of the
> previous commit (thus bypassing the "choose the commit message"
> dialog/file).
> 
> Can we have a similar convenience-command that squashes, and retains
> the second commit's message? Purpose is the same as the fixup command
> - saving a bit of time and unnecessary typing during a common
> operation.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you want, but I think the "squash" command does what you want. It does invoke the editor to edit it, which tends to be useful when working on projects that use a sign-off, since otherwise your second commit message would be tacked on after the sign-off and other trailers.

If you really want to avoid the editor prompt, you can run your rebase like so:

  GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR="$(git var GIT_EDITOR)" GIT_EDITOR=true git rebase -i

which will avoid spawning an editor except for the todo list and will implicitly concatenate the two messages. That will also make any "reword" options a no-op, though.

If you were looking for an editor command that just concatenates the two messages without an editor prompt, then no, we don't have that, and that would be a new feature. I wouldn't use it because most of my projects use sign-offs, but I'll let other folks weigh in if that's a feature they'd like to see.

-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Houston, Texas, US