From: Alan Mackenzie Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2026 15:45:28 GMT Subject: Re: Difficulties using git rebase. Help, please! Message-ID: In-Reply-To: Hello again, Git. On Sun, Jan 11, 2026 at 15:46:13 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > Hello, Git. > Some while ago I made some amendments to the Linux kernel for my own use > (at least). I now want to rebase these changes onto the master branch of > the Linux Stable repository. > When I wrote the changes, I based them off branch linux-6.13.y. The > command I tried to rebase with was, with PWD being the pertinent copy of > the Linux repository: > $ git rebase --onto master origin/linux-6.13.y HEAD > .. This didn't work well. In particular, I got a conflict in a file that > I had never changed. Why? > Well, I corrected the conflicts in that file, git add'ed it, git rebase > --continue'd, then got another conflict in a file I'd never touched. > Same again. After the third such conflict, I gave up with git rebase > --abort. > Criticism: there doesn't appear to be a --dry-run option in git rebase, > with which one can see how many files will be conflicted. Instead they > are notified one at a time, drip, drip, drip, .... to the user. In my > case there might have been four conflicted files, there might have been a > thousand. Either I'm missing something, or git rebase is missing > something, hopefully the former. > Incidentally, when I do git status, I get as part of the output: > Your branch is ahead of 'origin/linux-6.13.y' by 2012 commits. > .. I haven't done 2012 git commits in my life. What does this number > 2012 mean? > So, back to git rebase. Would somebody please explain why I am seeing > these conflicts at all? Please also help me make progress. I'm stuck. > Thanks! I've had a most helpful reply by private email that suggested I try: git log --oneline origin/linux-6.13.y..HEAD | wc -l .. This gave 2012, the number of commits git status says I'm ahead of that branch by. On removing the | wc -l from the command line, I see all these 2012 commits summarised. It turns out, just the top eight were mine, followed by 733381204a86 Linux 6.13.3-rc1 .. So if I delimit the commits to apply using 733381204a86 rather than origin/linux-6.13.y, the rebasing should work. So I tried: $ git rebase --onto master 733381204a86 HEAD , which now gives me conflicts just in my own commits. Success! I now have the arduous task of resolving all these conflicts. The diff I'm working with is around 3400 lines long. ;-( So many thanks to my helper. Why don't you say who you are and collect the credit you seem to be due? -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).