Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence?
6 messages between Jul 3, 2026 and Jul 8, 2026, from Matthias Beyer, Michal Suchánek, brian m. carlson, Matt Hunter, D. Ben Knoble, Johannes Schindelin.
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Hi git people,
in a recent conversation at work, the question of how to programmatically edit the git-rebase sequence came up.
Example use case:
I have a branch that touches a number of files, adds some files and removes some files. When rebasing, I want to split all commits that touched a certain subset of files, for the clearity of the history.
I look at the output of
git log master..mybranch --oneline --diff-filter=M -- "./subdir/*.rs"
to find all commits in that subdir that only touched the files. All of these commits are to be "edit"ed.
Now I fire up `git rebase -i master` and manually(!) match the list from above `git-log` call and find the respective commits to edit them.
Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically? Something like
git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")"
would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-)
Maybe I am just not aware of the obvious solution - I would be happy to learn that there is already one!
Best, Matthias
Re: Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence?
On Fri, Jul 03, 2026 at 02:02:33PM +0200, Matthias Beyer wrote:
Show 32 quoted lines
> Hi git people,
>
> in a recent conversation at work, the question of how to
> programmatically edit the git-rebase sequence came up.
>
> Example use case:
>
> I have a branch that touches a number of files, adds some files and
> removes some files.
> When rebasing, I want to split all commits that touched a certain subset
> of files, for the clearity of the history.
>
> I look at the output of
>
> git log master..mybranch --oneline --diff-filter=M -- "./subdir/*.rs"
>
> to find all commits in that subdir that only touched the files. All of
> these commits are to be "edit"ed.
>
> Now I fire up `git rebase -i master` and manually(!) match the list from
> above `git-log` call and find the respective commits to edit them.
>
> Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically?
> Something like
>
> git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")"
>
> would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too
> much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-)
>
> Maybe I am just not aware of the obvious solution - I would be happy to
> learn that there is already one!
Hello,
you could probably set a script as EDITOR (environment variable). Not great for one-off scripts I guess.
Thanks
Michal
Re: Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence?
On 2026-07-03 at 12:02:33, Matthias Beyer wrote:
Show 29 quoted lines
> Hi git people,
>
> in a recent conversation at work, the question of how to
> programmatically edit the git-rebase sequence came up.
>
> Example use case:
>
> I have a branch that touches a number of files, adds some files and
> removes some files.
> When rebasing, I want to split all commits that touched a certain subset
> of files, for the clearity of the history.
>
> I look at the output of
>
> git log master..mybranch --oneline --diff-filter=M -- "./subdir/*.rs"
>
> to find all commits in that subdir that only touched the files. All of
> these commits are to be "edit"ed.
>
> Now I fire up `git rebase -i master` and manually(!) match the list from
> above `git-log` call and find the respective commits to edit them.
>
> Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically?
> Something like
>
> git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")"
>
> would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too
> much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-)
Yes, such a thing exists. You want `GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR`, which is an `EDITOR`-like command that edits the rebase list in place. So tools like `ed`, `ex`, `sed -i`, `perl -i`, or `ruby -i` would be useful here.
So you might want something like this (untested):
GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR="perl -pi -e 's/^pick ($(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%h" -- "./subdir/*.rs" | paste -d '\''|'\'' -s -))/edit \$1/'" \
git rebase -i masterNote the use of `%h`, since by default the object IDs are abbreviated.
If you want something simpler, you can also write a shell script which edits the first argument in place and specify that. Arbitrary shell is allowed in `GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR`, much like in `EDITOR` and `VISUAL`.
I personally use this alias, which explicitly does not edit the sequence list, to automatically squash in all squash and fixup commits without prompting:
srebase = "!f() { GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR=true git rebase -m -i --autosquash \"$@\"; };f"--
brian m. carlson (they/them)
Toronto, Ontario, CA
Re: Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence?
On Fri Jul 3, 2026 at 9:42 AM EDT, brian m. carlson wrote:
Show 16 quoted lines
> On 2026-07-03 at 12:02:33, Matthias Beyer wrote:
>>
>> Now I fire up `git rebase -i master` and manually(!) match the list from
>> above `git-log` call and find the respective commits to edit them.
>>
>> Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically?
>> Something like
>>
>> git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")"
>>
>> would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too
>> much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-)
>
> Yes, such a thing exists. You want `GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR`, which is an
> `EDITOR`-like command that edits the rebase list in place. So tools
> like `ed`, `ex`, `sed -i`, `perl -i`, or `ruby -i` would be useful here.
Interesting tip - thanks!
Show 6 quoted lines
>
> I personally use this alias, which explicitly does not edit the sequence
> list, to automatically squash in all squash and fixup commits without
> prompting:
>
> srebase = "!f() { GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR=true git rebase -m -i --autosquash \"$@\"; };f"'git rebase --autosquash' does work now without the need to invoke --interactive mode. I believe we got this with f8f87e082798 (Merge branch 'ak/rebase-autosquash')
Re: Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence?
On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 9:46 AM brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> wrote:
Show 18 quoted lines
>
> On 2026-07-03 at 12:02:33, Matthias Beyer wrote:
> > Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically?
> > Something like
> >
> > git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")"
> >
> > would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too
> > much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-)
>
> Yes, such a thing exists. You want `GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR`, which is an
> `EDITOR`-like command that edits the rebase list in place. So tools
> like `ed`, `ex`, `sed -i`, `perl -i`, or `ruby -i` would be useful here.
>
> So you might want something like this (untested):
>
> GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR="perl -pi -e 's/^pick ($(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%h" -- "./subdir/*.rs" | paste -d '\''|'\'' -s -))/edit \$1/'" \
> git rebase -i master
Yep. Although, the last time I wrote a program that used GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR, I had to deal with enough shell-nesting that it was more convenient to make the editor program separate:
- git-split-topic [1] sets up a sequence editor with some interpolated
arguments that also re-invokes the original
- split-topic-editor [2] pre-processes the rebase script with ed
[1]: https://github.com/benknoble/Dotfiles/blob/ca48a09f783b78e038a41c5d60ee6b163337f580/links/bin/git-split-topic#L47-L53 [2]: https://github.com/benknoble/Dotfiles/blob/master/links/bin/split-topic-editor
See the comments in [1] for some weirdness in the invocation of the sequence editor, where it gets "$@" appended to the command string (meaning the last command in a chain might need to be written specially).
And yes, I'm sure there's a few ways for things to go wrong with the way some of the shell script variables are embedded into strings for another shell to evaluate later; if I rewrote with Zsh, I could at least use the ${(q)var} forms to perhaps handle that better…
--
D. Ben Knoble
Re: Programmatically edit the git rebase sequence?
Hi Matthias,
On Fri, 3 Jul 2026, Matthias Beyer wrote:
> in a recent conversation at work, the question of how to
> programmatically edit the git-rebase sequence came up.
The easiest way is probably to have the interactive rebase stop at the top of the rebase script:
# insert a `b` (for `break`) before the first line
GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR="sed -i 1ib" git rebase -i ...
(Note that this is GNU sed syntax, with BSD/macOS sed you'll have to get a bit creative, or write a real script and refer to it via the path.)
Then you can use a script to transform the rebase script before `git rebase --continue`.
I frequently use this technique with LLMs because they seem to be unable to control an interactive editor correctly.
Show 8 quoted lines
> I have a branch that touches a number of files, adds some files and
> removes some files.
> When rebasing, I want to split all commits that touched a certain subset
> of files, for the clearity of the history.
>
> I look at the output of
>
> git log master..mybranch --oneline --diff-filter=M -- "./subdir/*.rs"
Noting that the OIDs in $(git rev-parse --git-path rebase-merge/git-rebase-todo) are expanded, you could match them via the OIDs obtained using `rev-list` instead of `log`, to enumerate the OIDs instead of full commit history, then turning that into some kind of regex. Something along the lines
regex=$(git rev-list master..mybranch --diff-filter=M -- "subdir/*.rs" |
# read all lines, then turn newlines into `\|`
sed ':1;$b2;N;b1;:2;s/\n/\\|/g')
GIT_REBASE_TODO="$(git rev-parse --git-path rebase-merge/git-rebase-todo)"
test -z "$regex" ||
sed -i "s/^pick \($regex\)/edit \1/" $GIT_REBASE_TODO
This _should_ work, but you'll most likely want to adapt it to your particular use cases.
Ciao, Johannes
Show 21 quoted lines
>
> to find all commits in that subdir that only touched the files. All of
> these commits are to be "edit"ed.
>
> Now I fire up `git rebase -i master` and manually(!) match the list from
> above `git-log` call and find the respective commits to edit them.
>
> Is there a way I am not aware of to do that manual step programatically?
> Something like
>
> git rebase -i master --edit-commits="$(git log master..mybranch --diff-filter=M --format="%H" -- "./subdir/*.rs")"
>
> would be convenient here, although I would understand if that is too
> much clutter for the already very heavy git CLI interface :-)
>
> Maybe I am just not aware of the obvious solution - I would be happy to
> learn that there is already one!
>
> Best,
> Matthias
>