SYNOPSIS
--------
[verse]
-'git rebase' [-i | --interactive] [-v | --verbose] [-m | --merge]
- [-s <strategy> | --strategy=<strategy>]
- [-C<n>] [ --whitespace=<option>] [-p | --preserve-merges]
- [--onto <newbase>] <upstream> [<branch>]
+'git rebase' [-i | --interactive] [options] [--onto <newbase>]
+ <upstream> [<branch>]
+'git rebase' [-i | --interactive] [options] --onto <newbase>
+ --root [<branch>]
+
'git rebase' --continue | --skip | --abort
DESCRIPTION
All changes made by commits in the current branch but that are not
in <upstream> are saved to a temporary area. This is the same set
-of commits that would be shown by `git log <upstream>..HEAD`.
+of commits that would be shown by `git log <upstream>..HEAD` (or
+`git log HEAD`, if --root is specified).
The current branch is reset to <upstream>, or <newbase> if the
--onto option was supplied. This has the exact same effect as
from the latter branch, using `rebase --onto`.
First let's assume your 'topic' is based on branch 'next'.
-For example feature developed in 'topic' depends on some
+For example, a feature developed in 'topic' depends on some
functionality which is found in 'next'.
------------
o---o---o topic
------------
-We would want to make 'topic' forked from branch 'master',
-for example because the functionality 'topic' branch depend on
-got merged into more stable 'master' branch, like this:
+We want to make 'topic' forked from branch 'master'; for example,
+because the functionality on which 'topic' depends was merged into the
+more stable 'master' branch. We want our tree to look like this:
------------
o---o---o---o---o master
git rebase --abort
+CONFIGURATION
+-------------
+
+rebase.stat::
+ Whether to show a diffstat of what changed upstream since the last
+ rebase. False by default.
+
OPTIONS
-------
<newbase>::
Use merging strategies to rebase. When the recursive (default) merge
strategy is used, this allows rebase to be aware of renames on the
upstream side.
++
+Note that a rebase merge works by replaying each commit from the working
+branch on top of the <upstream> branch. Because of this, when a merge
+conflict happens, the side reported as 'ours' is the so-far rebased
+series, starting with <upstream>, and 'theirs' is the working branch. In
+other words, the sides are swapped.
-s <strategy>::
--strategy=<strategy>::
- Use the given merge strategy; can be supplied more than
- once to specify them in the order they should be tried.
- If there is no `-s` option, a built-in list of strategies
- is used instead ('git-merge-recursive' when merging a single
- head, 'git-merge-octopus' otherwise). This implies --merge.
+ Use the given merge strategy.
+ If there is no `-s` option 'git-merge-recursive' is used
+ instead. This implies --merge.
++
+Because 'git-rebase' replays each commit from the working branch
+on top of the <upstream> branch using the given strategy, using
+the 'ours' strategy simply discards all patches from the <branch>,
+which makes little sense.
+
+-q::
+--quiet::
+ Be quiet. Implies --no-stat.
-v::
--verbose::
- Display a diffstat of what changed upstream since the last rebase.
+ Be verbose. Implies --stat.
+
+--stat::
+ Show a diffstat of what changed upstream since the last rebase. The
+ diffstat is also controlled by the configuration option rebase.stat.
+
+-n::
+--no-stat::
+ Do not show a diffstat as part of the rebase process.
+
+--no-verify::
+ This option bypasses the pre-rebase hook. See also linkgit:githooks[5].
-C<n>::
Ensure at least <n> lines of surrounding context match before
context exist they all must match. By default no context is
ever ignored.
---whitespace=<nowarn|warn|error|error-all|strip>::
- This flag is passed to the 'git-apply' program
+-f::
+--force-rebase::
+ Force the rebase even if the current branch is a descendant
+ of the commit you are rebasing onto. Normally the command will
+ exit with the message "Current branch is up to date" in such a
+ situation.
+
+--ignore-whitespace::
+--whitespace=<option>::
+ These flag are passed to the 'git-apply' program
(see linkgit:git-apply[1]) that applies the patch.
+ Incompatible with the --interactive option.
+
+--committer-date-is-author-date::
+--ignore-date::
+ These flags are passed to 'git-am' to easily change the dates
+ of the rebased commits (see linkgit:git-am[1]).
-i::
--interactive::
-p::
--preserve-merges::
- Instead of ignoring merges, try to recreate them. This option
- only works in interactive mode.
+ Instead of ignoring merges, try to recreate them.
+
+--root::
+ Rebase all commits reachable from <branch>, instead of
+ limiting them with an <upstream>. This allows you to rebase
+ the root commit(s) on a branch. Must be used with --onto, and
+ will skip changes already contained in <newbase> (instead of
+ <upstream>). When used together with --preserve-merges, 'all'
+ root commits will be rewritten to have <newbase> as parent
+ instead.
include::merge-strategies.txt[]
NOTES
-----
-When you rebase a branch, you are changing its history in a way that
-will cause problems for anyone who already has a copy of the branch
-in their repository and tries to pull updates from you. You should
-understand the implications of using 'git-rebase' on a repository that
-you share.
+
+You should understand the implications of using 'git-rebase' on a
+repository that you share. See also RECOVERING FROM UPSTREAM REBASE
+below.
When the git-rebase command is run, it will first execute a "pre-rebase"
hook if one exists. You can use this hook to do sanity checks and
the files and/or the commit message, amend the commit, and continue
rebasing.
+If you just want to edit the commit message for a commit, replace the
+command "pick" with the command "reword".
+
If you want to fold two or more commits into one, replace the command
"pick" with "squash" for the second and subsequent commit. If the
commits had different authors, it will attribute the squashed commit to
the author of the first commit.
-In both cases, or when a "pick" does not succeed (because of merge
-errors), the loop will stop to let you fix things, and you can continue
-the loop with `git rebase --continue`.
+'git-rebase' will stop when "pick" has been replaced with "edit" or
+when a command fails due to merge errors. When you are done editing
+and/or resolving conflicts you can continue with `git rebase --continue`.
For example, if you want to reorder the last 5 commits, such that what
was HEAD~4 becomes the new HEAD. To achieve that, you would call
after each commit, test, and amend the commit if fixes are necessary.
+RECOVERING FROM UPSTREAM REBASE
+-------------------------------
+
+Rebasing (or any other form of rewriting) a branch that others have
+based work on is a bad idea: anyone downstream of it is forced to
+manually fix their history. This section explains how to do the fix
+from the downstream's point of view. The real fix, however, would be
+to avoid rebasing the upstream in the first place.
+
+To illustrate, suppose you are in a situation where someone develops a
+'subsystem' branch, and you are working on a 'topic' that is dependent
+on this 'subsystem'. You might end up with a history like the
+following:
+
+------------
+ o---o---o---o---o---o---o---o---o master
+ \
+ o---o---o---o---o subsystem
+ \
+ *---*---* topic
+------------
+
+If 'subsystem' is rebased against 'master', the following happens:
+
+------------
+ o---o---o---o---o---o---o---o master
+ \ \
+ o---o---o---o---o o'--o'--o'--o'--o' subsystem
+ \
+ *---*---* topic
+------------
+
+If you now continue development as usual, and eventually merge 'topic'
+to 'subsystem', the commits from 'subsystem' will remain duplicated forever:
+
+------------
+ o---o---o---o---o---o---o---o master
+ \ \
+ o---o---o---o---o o'--o'--o'--o'--o'--M subsystem
+ \ /
+ *---*---*-..........-*--* topic
+------------
+
+Such duplicates are generally frowned upon because they clutter up
+history, making it harder to follow. To clean things up, you need to
+transplant the commits on 'topic' to the new 'subsystem' tip, i.e.,
+rebase 'topic'. This becomes a ripple effect: anyone downstream from
+'topic' is forced to rebase too, and so on!
+
+There are two kinds of fixes, discussed in the following subsections:
+
+Easy case: The changes are literally the same.::
+
+ This happens if the 'subsystem' rebase was a simple rebase and
+ had no conflicts.
+
+Hard case: The changes are not the same.::
+
+ This happens if the 'subsystem' rebase had conflicts, or used
+ `\--interactive` to omit, edit, or squash commits; or if the
+ upstream used one of `commit \--amend`, `reset`, or
+ `filter-branch`.
+
+
+The easy case
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Only works if the changes (patch IDs based on the diff contents) on
+'subsystem' are literally the same before and after the rebase
+'subsystem' did.
+
+In that case, the fix is easy because 'git-rebase' knows to skip
+changes that are already present in the new upstream. So if you say
+(assuming you're on 'topic')
+------------
+ $ git rebase subsystem
+------------
+you will end up with the fixed history
+------------
+ o---o---o---o---o---o---o---o master
+ \
+ o'--o'--o'--o'--o' subsystem
+ \
+ *---*---* topic
+------------
+
+
+The hard case
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Things get more complicated if the 'subsystem' changes do not exactly
+correspond to the ones before the rebase.
+
+NOTE: While an "easy case recovery" sometimes appears to be successful
+ even in the hard case, it may have unintended consequences. For
+ example, a commit that was removed via `git rebase
+ \--interactive` will be **resurrected**!
+
+The idea is to manually tell 'git-rebase' "where the old 'subsystem'
+ended and your 'topic' began", that is, what the old merge-base
+between them was. You will have to find a way to name the last commit
+of the old 'subsystem', for example:
+
+* With the 'subsystem' reflog: after 'git-fetch', the old tip of
+ 'subsystem' is at `subsystem@\{1}`. Subsequent fetches will
+ increase the number. (See linkgit:git-reflog[1].)
+
+* Relative to the tip of 'topic': knowing that your 'topic' has three
+ commits, the old tip of 'subsystem' must be `topic~3`.
+
+You can then transplant the old `subsystem..topic` to the new tip by
+saying (for the reflog case, and assuming you are on 'topic' already):
+------------
+ $ git rebase --onto subsystem subsystem@{1}
+------------
+
+The ripple effect of a "hard case" recovery is especially bad:
+'everyone' downstream from 'topic' will now have to perform a "hard
+case" recovery too!
+
+
Authors
------
Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> and