git rebase --abort of an --onto run does not checkout the originating branch

'git rebase --abort' has documentation stating it will restore the original <branch>. This works great for my basic usage of 'git rebase --interactive', for instance.

When running 'git rebase --onto', it does exactly what the documentation states, but the restored branch is not desirable.

To cherry pick a range of commits, I run:

git rebase --onto mybranch START_SHA END_SHA

In the middle, I decide to run 'git rebase --abort'.

Just as the documentation states, it performs a checkout of END_SHA as the restored branch. END_SHA has nothing to do with the originating branch, and confusion ensues.

Is there a reason why 'git rebase' should not store off the originating branch and use that for an --abort, instead of <branch> which is END_SHA?

Thanks.

Josh

Joshua Jensen <jjensen@workspacewhiz.com> writes:

When END_SHA is an actual branch name (which by the way is almost always how I use --onto in my attempts to transplant my topics), and when I found out that the conflicts I see while rebasing the topic to a different starting point (i.e. --onto) is too much to handle for too little gain, I would not appreciate if --abort took me to the --onto branch, which is totally uninteresting for the purpose of what I was attempting to do, namely, to deal with the topic.

If the command took me back to the tip of the topic that I failed to rebase, I can continue attempting to whip it in shape using different strategies from there (e.g. merging an older part of upstream into the topic before merging the topic back to the upstream).

----- Original Message -----
From: Junio C Hamano
Date: 10/22/2010 1:15 PM

As if turns out, I wasn't expecting --abort to take me to the --onto branch but rather, the originating branch. Let's assume I am working in a branch called JBranch. I run:

         git rebase --onto master START_SHA END_SHA

I decide to abort the rebase. I expect to be returned to the place I started from: JBranch. After all, I am aborting the rebase. I don't want to proceed. I decided it was the wrong thing to do, so just put me back where I was.

Anyway, that was my thought pattern. Since that isn't how it works, I'll just have to remember where I was when I started the rebase, perform the abort, and checkout the originating branch.

Thank you for your time.

Josh

Joshua Jensen <jjensen@workspacewhiz.com> writes:

"git checkout -" (or its generalization "git checkout @{-<n>}").

P.S. This is discounting whether there is bug in "git rebase --abort" after using it with `--onto` or not.