Re: [RFC] git-brebase

From: Nico Williams <nico@cryptonector.com>
Date: Oct 3, 2026, 21:13 UTC
Message-ID: <asFv9QcpLgzPnnFb@ubby>
In-Reply-To: <asFoq4gnl1caJM2U@debian>

On Sat, Oct 03, 2026 at 10:56:25PM +0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> > I also have a getopts_long-like function (see my gists) for bash if you
> > like.
> 
> I think getopts(1) is not usable for git(1)-related scripts, because
> getopts(1) interprets '--' as the end of the options, but git(1) uses it
> for distinguishing commits from paths.  If anyone shows me how it can be
> used, I'd be interested, because I've hit this issue in the past with
> other script.

https://gist.github.com/nicowilliams/f3fe2b10b380aecdef403acb246dced2

Though there's many ways to do this.

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> > > cat >"$callback" <<__EOF__
> > > #!/bin/bash
> > > ...
> > > __EOF__
> > > chmod +x "$callback";
> > 
> > Here what might be better is to have a command-line option to execute
> > this callback without having to write it to a file,
> 
> How would you do it?

I'd have an option or sub-command of the main script that says "do the callback thing", then when you run `git bisect run ...` put in the name of this script as the command and the "do the callback thing" option next.

Show 5 quoted lines

> > and use environment
> > variables to pass arguments to it.
> 
> The callback doesn't really need any arguments, since 'git bisect run'
> won't pass any arguments to it.

But you're embedding values into the temp executable script -- if you don't have that any more you'll have to pass those in.

> > which means I can't use this in detached HEAD mode :(
> 
> Oh!  I wasn't aware that git-rebase(1) supported detached HEAD mode.

Sure does!

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> > I work in detached HEAD mode almost exclusively.  I know, that's..
> > weird.  But it works for me.
> 
> Ouch!  Indeed.  :)
> Out of curiosity, are there any interesting reasons for such
> self-implied pain?

I often do:

: ; git checkout origin/master : ; <do some work> : ; git add ...; git commit -m '...' : ; git push myfork HEAD:refs/heads/the-branch-name-here # <-- I name it here

then open a PR.

Now I don't have a branch here, but who cares? If I switch to other work and later want to come back to this work I'll either a) create a local branch then, and/or b) when I resume work on the first thing I'll `git checkout myfork/the-branch-name-here` and... once more work in detached HEAD mode.

And if I need to see "what was I doing?" then I use `git log --oneline` and `git reflog` and I quickly see the remote branch of interest.

The remote branches are the symbolic names I need to preserve, and my clone will know them, so I only need local branch names for things I work on w/o a network or over a long time.

I do exaggerate a bit. I do this a lot, but maybe not quite "almost exclusively". Often I'm forced to have a local branch by opinionated tools other than git itself.

Nico