docs: clarify what git-rebase's "-p" / "--preserve-merges" does

[git/gitweb.git] / Documentation / git-rebase.txt

git-rebase(1)
=============

NAME
----
git-rebase - Forward-port local commits to the updated upstream head

SYNOPSIS
--------
[verse]
'git rebase' [-i | --interactive] [options] [--exec <cmd>] [--onto <newbase>]
        [<upstream>] [<branch>]
'git rebase' [-i | --interactive] [options] [--exec <cmd>] [--onto <newbase>]
        --root [<branch>]
'git rebase' --continue | --skip | --abort | --edit-todo

DESCRIPTION
-----------
If <branch> is specified, 'git rebase' will perform an automatic
`git checkout <branch>` before doing anything else.  Otherwise
it remains on the current branch.

If <upstream> is not specified, the upstream configured in
branch.<name>.remote and branch.<name>.merge options will be used; see
linkgit:git-config[1] for details.  If you are currently not on any
branch or if the current branch does not have a configured upstream,
the rebase will abort.

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` (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
`git reset --hard <upstream>` (or <newbase>).  ORIG_HEAD is set
to point at the tip of the branch before the reset.

The commits that were previously saved into the temporary area are
then reapplied to the current branch, one by one, in order. Note that
any commits in HEAD which introduce the same textual changes as a commit
in HEAD..<upstream> are omitted (i.e., a patch already accepted upstream
with a different commit message or timestamp will be skipped).

It is possible that a merge failure will prevent this process from being
completely automatic.  You will have to resolve any such merge failure
and run `git rebase --continue`.  Another option is to bypass the commit
that caused the merge failure with `git rebase --skip`.  To check out the
original <branch> and remove the .git/rebase-apply working files, use the
command `git rebase --abort` instead.

Assume the following history exists and the current branch is "topic":

------------
          A---B---C topic
         /
    D---E---F---G master
------------

From this point, the result of either of the following commands:


    git rebase master
    git rebase master topic

would be:

------------
                  A'--B'--C' topic
                 /
    D---E---F---G master
------------

*NOTE:* The latter form is just a short-hand of `git checkout topic`
followed by `git rebase master`. When rebase exits `topic` will
remain the checked-out branch.

If the upstream branch already contains a change you have made (e.g.,
because you mailed a patch which was applied upstream), then that commit
will be skipped. For example, running `git rebase master` on the
following history (in which A' and A introduce the same set of changes,
but have different committer information):

------------
          A---B---C topic
         /
    D---E---A'---F master
------------

will result in:

------------
                   B'---C' topic
                  /
    D---E---A'---F master
------------

Here is how you would transplant a topic branch based on one
branch to another, to pretend that you forked the topic branch
from the latter branch, using `rebase --onto`.

First let's assume your 'topic' is based on branch 'next'.
For example, a feature developed in 'topic' depends on some
functionality which is found in 'next'.

------------
    o---o---o---o---o  master
         \
          o---o---o---o---o  next
                           \
                            o---o---o  topic
------------

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
        |            \
        |             o'--o'--o'  topic
         \
          o---o---o---o---o  next
------------

We can get this using the following command:

    git rebase --onto master next topic


Another example of --onto option is to rebase part of a
branch.  If we have the following situation:

------------
                            H---I---J topicB
                           /
                  E---F---G  topicA
                 /
    A---B---C---D  master
------------

then the command

    git rebase --onto master topicA topicB

would result in:

------------
                 H'--I'--J'  topicB
                /
                | E---F---G  topicA
                |/
    A---B---C---D  master
------------

This is useful when topicB does not depend on topicA.

A range of commits could also be removed with rebase.  If we have
the following situation:

------------
    E---F---G---H---I---J  topicA
------------

then the command

    git rebase --onto topicA~5 topicA~3 topicA

would result in the removal of commits F and G:

------------
    E---H'---I'---J'  topicA
------------

This is useful if F and G were flawed in some way, or should not be
part of topicA.  Note that the argument to --onto and the <upstream>
parameter can be any valid commit-ish.

In case of conflict, 'git rebase' will stop at the first problematic commit
and leave conflict markers in the tree.  You can use 'git diff' to locate
the markers (<<<<<<) and make edits to resolve the conflict.  For each
file you edit, you need to tell Git that the conflict has been resolved,
typically this would be done with


    git add <filename>


After resolving the conflict manually and updating the index with the
desired resolution, you can continue the rebasing process with


    git rebase --continue


Alternatively, you can undo the 'git rebase' with


    git rebase --abort

CONFIGURATION
-------------

rebase.stat::
        Whether to show a diffstat of what changed upstream since the last
        rebase. False by default.

rebase.autosquash::
        If set to true enable '--autosquash' option by default.

rebase.autostash::
        If set to true enable '--autostash' option by default.

OPTIONS
-------
--onto <newbase>::
        Starting point at which to create the new commits. If the
        --onto option is not specified, the starting point is
        <upstream>.  May be any valid commit, and not just an
        existing branch name.
+
As a special case, you may use "A\...B" as a shortcut for the
merge base of A and B if there is exactly one merge base. You can
leave out at most one of A and B, in which case it defaults to HEAD.

<upstream>::
        Upstream branch to compare against.  May be any valid commit,
        not just an existing branch name. Defaults to the configured
        upstream for the current branch.

<branch>::
        Working branch; defaults to HEAD.

--continue::
        Restart the rebasing process after having resolved a merge conflict.

--abort::
        Abort the rebase operation and reset HEAD to the original
        branch. If <branch> was provided when the rebase operation was
        started, then HEAD will be reset to <branch>. Otherwise HEAD
        will be reset to where it was when the rebase operation was
        started.

--keep-empty::
        Keep the commits that do not change anything from its
        parents in the result.

--skip::
        Restart the rebasing process by skipping the current patch.

--edit-todo::
        Edit the todo list during an interactive rebase.

-m::
--merge::
        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.
        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.

-X <strategy-option>::
--strategy-option=<strategy-option>::
        Pass the <strategy-option> through to the merge strategy.
        This implies `--merge` and, if no strategy has been
        specified, `-s recursive`.  Note the reversal of 'ours' and
        'theirs' as noted above for the `-m` option.

-S[<keyid>]::
--gpg-sign[=<keyid>]::
        GPG-sign commits.

-q::
--quiet::
        Be quiet. Implies --no-stat.

-v::
--verbose::
        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].

--verify::
        Allows the pre-rebase hook to run, which is the default.  This option can
        be used to override --no-verify.  See also linkgit:githooks[5].

-C<n>::
        Ensure at least <n> lines of surrounding context match before
        and after each change.  When fewer lines of surrounding
        context exist they all must match.  By default no context is
        ever ignored.

-f::
--force-rebase::
        Force the rebase even if the current branch is a descendant
        of the commit you are rebasing onto.  Normally non-interactive rebase will
        exit with the message "Current branch is up to date" in such a
        situation.
        Incompatible with the --interactive option.
+
You may find this (or --no-ff with an interactive rebase) helpful after
reverting a topic branch merge, as this option recreates the topic branch with
fresh commits so it can be remerged successfully without needing to "revert
the reversion" (see the
link:howto/revert-a-faulty-merge.html[revert-a-faulty-merge How-To] for details).

--fork-point::
--no-fork-point::
        Use 'git merge-base --fork-point' to find a better common ancestor
        between `upstream` and `branch` when calculating which commits have
        have been introduced by `branch` (see linkgit:git-merge-base[1]).
+
If no non-option arguments are given on the command line, then the default is
`--fork-point @{u}` otherwise the `upstream` argument is interpreted literally
unless the `--fork-point` option is specified.

--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]).
        Incompatible with the --interactive option.

-i::
--interactive::
        Make a list of the commits which are about to be rebased.  Let the
        user edit that list before rebasing.  This mode can also be used to
        split commits (see SPLITTING COMMITS below).

-p::
--preserve-merges::
        Recreate merge commits instead of flattening the history by replaying
        commits a merge commit introduces. Merge conflict resolutions or manual
        amendments to merge commits are not preserved.
+
This uses the `--interactive` machinery internally, but combining it
with the `--interactive` option explicitly is generally not a good
idea unless you know what you are doing (see BUGS below).

-x <cmd>::
--exec <cmd>::
        Append "exec <cmd>" after each line creating a commit in the
        final history. <cmd> will be interpreted as one or more shell
        commands.
+
This option can only be used with the `--interactive` option
(see INTERACTIVE MODE below).
+
You may execute several commands by either using one instance of `--exec`
with several commands:
+
        git rebase -i --exec "cmd1 && cmd2 && ..."
+
or by giving more than one `--exec`:
+
        git rebase -i --exec "cmd1" --exec "cmd2" --exec ...
+
If `--autosquash` is used, "exec" lines will not be appended for
the intermediate commits, and will only appear at the end of each
squash/fixup series.

--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.  When used with --onto, it
        will skip changes already contained in <newbase> (instead of
        <upstream>) whereas without --onto it will operate on every change.
        When used together with both --onto and --preserve-merges,
        'all' root commits will be rewritten to have <newbase> as parent
        instead.

--autosquash::
--no-autosquash::
        When the commit log message begins with "squash! ..." (or
        "fixup! ..."), and there is a commit whose title begins with
        the same ..., automatically modify the todo list of rebase -i
        so that the commit marked for squashing comes right after the
        commit to be modified, and change the action of the moved
        commit from `pick` to `squash` (or `fixup`).  Ignores subsequent
        "fixup! " or "squash! " after the first, in case you referred to an
        earlier fixup/squash with `git commit --fixup/--squash`.
+
This option is only valid when the '--interactive' option is used.
+
If the '--autosquash' option is enabled by default using the
configuration variable `rebase.autosquash`, this option can be
used to override and disable this setting.

--[no-]autostash::
        Automatically create a temporary stash before the operation
        begins, and apply it after the operation ends.  This means
        that you can run rebase on a dirty worktree.  However, use
        with care: the final stash application after a successful
        rebase might result in non-trivial conflicts.

--no-ff::
        With --interactive, cherry-pick all rebased commits instead of
        fast-forwarding over the unchanged ones.  This ensures that the
        entire history of the rebased branch is composed of new commits.
+
Without --interactive, this is a synonym for --force-rebase.
+
You may find this helpful after reverting a topic branch merge, as this option
recreates the topic branch with fresh commits so it can be remerged
successfully without needing to "revert the reversion" (see the
link:howto/revert-a-faulty-merge.html[revert-a-faulty-merge How-To] for details).

include::merge-strategies.txt[]

NOTES
-----

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
reject the rebase if it isn't appropriate.  Please see the template
pre-rebase hook script for an example.

Upon completion, <branch> will be the current branch.

INTERACTIVE MODE
----------------

Rebasing interactively means that you have a chance to edit the commits
which are rebased.  You can reorder the commits, and you can
remove them (weeding out bad or otherwise unwanted patches).

The interactive mode is meant for this type of workflow:

1. have a wonderful idea
2. hack on the code
3. prepare a series for submission
4. submit

where point 2. consists of several instances of

a) regular use

 1. finish something worthy of a commit
 2. commit

b) independent fixup

 1. realize that something does not work
 2. fix that
 3. commit it

Sometimes the thing fixed in b.2. cannot be amended to the not-quite
perfect commit it fixes, because that commit is buried deeply in a
patch series.  That is exactly what interactive rebase is for: use it
after plenty of "a"s and "b"s, by rearranging and editing
commits, and squashing multiple commits into one.

Start it with the last commit you want to retain as-is:

        git rebase -i <after-this-commit>

An editor will be fired up with all the commits in your current branch
(ignoring merge commits), which come after the given commit.  You can
reorder the commits in this list to your heart's content, and you can
remove them.  The list looks more or less like this:

-------------------------------------------
pick deadbee The oneline of this commit
pick fa1afe1 The oneline of the next commit
...
-------------------------------------------

The oneline descriptions are purely for your pleasure; 'git rebase' will
not look at them but at the commit names ("deadbee" and "fa1afe1" in this
example), so do not delete or edit the names.

By replacing the command "pick" with the command "edit", you can tell
'git rebase' to stop after applying that commit, so that you can edit
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" for the second and subsequent commits with "squash" or "fixup".
If the commits had different authors, the folded commit will be
attributed to the author of the first commit.  The suggested commit
message for the folded commit is the concatenation of the commit
messages of the first commit and of those with the "squash" command,
but omits the commit messages of commits with the "fixup" command.

'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
'git rebase' like this:

----------------------
$ git rebase -i HEAD~5
----------------------

And move the first patch to the end of the list.

You might want to preserve merges, if you have a history like this:

------------------
           X
            \
         A---M---B
        /
---o---O---P---Q
------------------

Suppose you want to rebase the side branch starting at "A" to "Q". Make
sure that the current HEAD is "B", and call

-----------------------------
$ git rebase -i -p --onto Q O
-----------------------------

Reordering and editing commits usually creates untested intermediate
steps.  You may want to check that your history editing did not break
anything by running a test, or at least recompiling at intermediate
points in history by using the "exec" command (shortcut "x").  You may
do so by creating a todo list like this one:

-------------------------------------------
pick deadbee Implement feature XXX
fixup f1a5c00 Fix to feature XXX
exec make
pick c0ffeee The oneline of the next commit
edit deadbab The oneline of the commit after
exec cd subdir; make test
...
-------------------------------------------

The interactive rebase will stop when a command fails (i.e. exits with
non-0 status) to give you an opportunity to fix the problem. You can
continue with `git rebase --continue`.

The "exec" command launches the command in a shell (the one specified
in `$SHELL`, or the default shell if `$SHELL` is not set), so you can
use shell features (like "cd", ">", ";" ...). The command is run from
the root of the working tree.

----------------------------------
$ git rebase -i --exec "make test"
----------------------------------

This command lets you check that intermediate commits are compilable.
The todo list becomes like that:

--------------------
pick 5928aea one
exec make test
pick 04d0fda two
exec make test
pick ba46169 three
exec make test
pick f4593f9 four
exec make test
--------------------

SPLITTING COMMITS
-----------------

In interactive mode, you can mark commits with the action "edit".  However,
this does not necessarily mean that 'git rebase' expects the result of this
edit to be exactly one commit.  Indeed, you can undo the commit, or you can
add other commits.  This can be used to split a commit into two:

- Start an interactive rebase with `git rebase -i <commit>^`, where
  <commit> is the commit you want to split.  In fact, any commit range
  will do, as long as it contains that commit.

- Mark the commit you want to split with the action "edit".

- When it comes to editing that commit, execute `git reset HEAD^`.  The
  effect is that the HEAD is rewound by one, and the index follows suit.
  However, the working tree stays the same.

- Now add the changes to the index that you want to have in the first
  commit.  You can use `git add` (possibly interactively) or
  'git gui' (or both) to do that.

- Commit the now-current index with whatever commit message is appropriate
  now.

- Repeat the last two steps until your working tree is clean.

- Continue the rebase with `git rebase --continue`.

If you are not absolutely sure that the intermediate revisions are
consistent (they compile, pass the testsuite, etc.) you should use
'git stash' to stash away the not-yet-committed changes
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, squash, or fixup 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!

BUGS
----
The todo list presented by `--preserve-merges --interactive` does not
represent the topology of the revision graph.  Editing commits and
rewording their commit messages should work fine, but attempts to
reorder commits tend to produce counterintuitive results.

For example, an attempt to rearrange
------------
1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5
------------
to
------------
1 --- 2 --- 4 --- 3 --- 5
------------
by moving the "pick 4" line will result in the following history:
------------
        3
       /
1 --- 2 --- 4 --- 5
------------

GIT
---
Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite