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NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

       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 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.

       -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 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 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
           revert-a-faulty-merge How-To[1] 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 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 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 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
           Instead of ignoring merges, try to recreate them.

           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 revert-a-faulty-merge How-To[1] for
           details).

MERGE STRATEGIES

       The merge mechanism (git-merge and git-pull commands) allows the backend merge strategies
       to be chosen with -s option. Some strategies can also take their own options, which can be
       passed by giving -X<option> arguments to git-merge and/or git-pull.

       resolve
           This can only resolve two heads (i.e. the current branch and another branch you pulled
           from) using a 3-way merge algorithm. It tries to carefully detect criss-cross merge
           ambiguities and is considered generally safe and fast.

       recursive
           This can only resolve two heads using a 3-way merge algorithm. When there is more than
           one common ancestor that can be used for 3-way merge, it creates a merged tree of the
           common ancestors and uses that as the reference tree for the 3-way merge. This has
           been reported to result in fewer merge conflicts without causing mis-merges by tests
           done on actual merge commits taken from Linux 2.6 kernel development history.
           Additionally this can detect and handle merges involving renames. This is the default
           merge strategy when pulling or merging one branch.

           The recursive strategy can take the following options:

           ours
               This option forces conflicting hunks to be auto-resolved cleanly by favoring our
               version. Changes from the other tree that do not conflict with our side are
               reflected to the merge result. For a binary file, the entire contents are taken
               from our side.

               This should not be confused with the ours merge strategy, which does not even look
               at what the other tree contains at all. It discards everything the other tree did,
               declaring our history contains all that happened in it.

           theirs
               This is the opposite of ours.

           patience
               With this option, merge-recursive spends a little extra time to avoid mismerges
               that sometimes occur due to unimportant matching lines (e.g., braces from distinct
               functions). Use this when the branches to be merged have diverged wildly. See also
               git-diff(1)--patience.

           diff-algorithm=[patience|minimal|histogram|myers]
               Tells merge-recursive to use a different diff algorithm, which can help avoid
               mismerges that occur due to unimportant matching lines (such as braces from
               distinct functions). See also git-diff(1)--diff-algorithm.

           ignore-space-change, ignore-all-space, ignore-space-at-eol
               Treats lines with the indicated type of whitespace change as unchanged for the
               sake of a three-way merge. Whitespace changes mixed with other changes to a line
               are not ignored. See also git-diff(1)-b, -w, and --ignore-space-at-eol.

               •   If their version only introduces whitespace changes to a line, our version is
                   used;

               •   If our version introduces whitespace changes but their version includes a
                   substantial change, their version is used;

               •   Otherwise, the merge proceeds in the usual way.

           renormalize
               This runs a virtual check-out and check-in of all three stages of a file when
               resolving a three-way merge. This option is meant to be used when merging branches
               with different clean filters or end-of-line normalization rules. See "Merging
               branches with differing checkin/checkout attributes" in gitattributes(5) for
               details.

           no-renormalize
               Disables the renormalize option. This overrides the merge.renormalize
               configuration variable.

           rename-threshold=<n>
               Controls the similarity threshold used for rename detection. See also git-
               diff(1)-M.

           subtree[=<path>]
               This option is a more advanced form of subtree strategy, where the strategy makes
               a guess on how two trees must be shifted to match with each other when merging.
               Instead, the specified path is prefixed (or stripped from the beginning) to make
               the shape of two trees to match.

       octopus
           This resolves cases with more than two heads, but refuses to do a complex merge that
           needs manual resolution. It is primarily meant to be used for bundling topic branch
           heads together. This is the default merge strategy when pulling or merging more than
           one branch.

       ours
           This resolves any number of heads, but the resulting tree of the merge is always that
           of the current branch head, effectively ignoring all changes from all other branches.
           It is meant to be used to supersede old development history of side branches. Note
           that this is different from the -Xours option to the recursive merge strategy.

       subtree
           This is a modified recursive strategy. When merging trees A and B, if B corresponds to
           a subtree of A, B is first adjusted to match the tree structure of A, instead of
           reading the trees at the same level. This adjustment is also done to the common
           ancestor tree.

       With the strategies that use 3-way merge (including the default, recursive), if a change
       is made on both branches, but later reverted on one of the branches, that change will be
       present in the merged result; some people find this behavior confusing. It occurs because
       only the heads and the merge base are considered when performing a merge, not the
       individual commits. The merge algorithm therefore considers the reverted change as no
       change at all, and substitutes the changed version instead.

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 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 git(1) suite

NOTES

        1. revert-a-faulty-merge How-To
           file:///usr/share/doc/git/html/howto/revert-a-faulty-merge.html