git-rebase(1)



GIT-REBASE(1)                     Git Manual                     GIT-REBASE(1)

NAME
       git-rebase - Reapply commits on top of another base tip

SYNOPSIS
       git rebase [-i | --interactive] [<options>] [--exec <cmd>]
               [--onto <newbase> | --keep-base] [<upstream> [<branch>]]
       git rebase [-i | --interactive] [<options>] [--exec <cmd>] [--onto <newbase>]
               --root [<branch>]
       git rebase (--continue | --skip | --abort | --quit | --edit-todo | --show-current-patch)

DESCRIPTION
       If <branch> is specified, git rebase will perform an automatic git
       switch <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) and the --fork-point option is assumed. 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 by git log
       'fork_point'..HEAD, if --fork-point is active (see the description on
       --fork-point below); or by git log HEAD, if the --root option 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.useBuiltin
           Unused configuration variable. Used in Git versions 2.20 and 2.21
           as an escape hatch to enable the legacy shellscript implementation
           of rebase. Now the built-in rewrite of it in C is always used.
           Setting this will emit a warning, to alert any remaining users that
           setting this now does nothing.

       rebase.backend
           Default backend to use for rebasing. Possible choices are apply or
           merge. In the future, if the merge backend gains all remaining
           capabilities of the apply backend, this setting may become unused.

       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
           When set to true, automatically create a temporary stash entry
           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. This option can be
           overridden by the --no-autostash and --autostash options of git-
           rebase(1). Defaults to false.

       rebase.missingCommitsCheck
           If set to "warn", git rebase -i will print a warning if some
           commits are removed (e.g. a line was deleted), however the rebase
           will still proceed. If set to "error", it will print the previous
           warning and stop the rebase, git rebase --edit-todo can then be
           used to correct the error. If set to "ignore", no checking is done.
           To drop a commit without warning or error, use the drop command in
           the todo list. Defaults to "ignore".

       rebase.instructionFormat
           A format string, as specified in git-log(1), to be used for the
           todo list during an interactive rebase. The format will
           automatically have the long commit hash prepended to the format.

       rebase.abbreviateCommands
           If set to true, git rebase will use abbreviated command names in
           the todo list resulting in something like this:

                       p deadbee The oneline of the commit
                       p fa1afe1 The oneline of the next commit
                       ...

           instead of:

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

           Defaults to false.

       rebase.rescheduleFailedExec
           Automatically reschedule exec commands that failed. This only makes
           sense in interactive mode (or when an --exec option was provided).
           This is the same as specifying the --reschedule-failed-exec option.

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.

       --keep-base
           Set the starting point at which to create the new commits to the
           merge base of <upstream> <branch>. Running git rebase --keep-base
           <upstream> <branch> is equivalent to running git rebase --onto
           <upstream>... <upstream>.

           This option is useful in the case where one is developing a feature
           on top of an upstream branch. While the feature is being worked on,
           the upstream branch may advance and it may not be the best idea to
           keep rebasing on top of the upstream but to keep the base commit
           as-is.

           Although both this option and --fork-point find the merge base
           between <upstream> and <branch>, this option uses the merge base as
           the starting point on which new commits will be created, whereas
           --fork-point uses the merge base to determine the set of commits
           which will be rebased.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       <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.

       --quit
           Abort the rebase operation but HEAD is not reset back to the
           original branch. The index and working tree are also left unchanged
           as a result. If a temporary stash entry was created using
           --autostash, it will be saved to the stash list.

       --apply: Use applying strategies to rebase (calling git-am internally).
       This option may become a no-op in the future once the merge backend
       handles everything the apply one does.

       + See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --empty={drop,keep,ask}
           How to handle commits that are not empty to start and are not clean
           cherry-picks of any upstream commit, but which become empty after
           rebasing (because they contain a subset of already upstream
           changes). With drop (the default), commits that become empty are
           dropped. With keep, such commits are kept. With ask (implied by
           --interactive), the rebase will halt when an empty commit is
           applied allowing you to choose whether to drop it, edit files more,
           or just commit the empty changes. Other options, like --exec, will
           use the default of drop unless -i/--interactive is explicitly
           specified.

           Note that commits which start empty are kept (unless
           --no-keep-empty is specified), and commits which are clean
           cherry-picks (as determined by git log --cherry-mark ...) are
           detected and dropped as a preliminary step (unless
           --reapply-cherry-picks is passed).

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --no-keep-empty, --keep-empty
           Do not keep commits that start empty before the rebase (i.e. that
           do not change anything from its parent) in the result. The default
           is to keep commits which start empty, since creating such commits
           requires passing the --allow-empty override flag to git commit,
           signifying that a user is very intentionally creating such a commit
           and thus wants to keep it.

           Usage of this flag will probably be rare, since you can get rid of
           commits that start empty by just firing up an interactive rebase
           and removing the lines corresponding to the commits you don't want.
           This flag exists as a convenient shortcut, such as for cases where
           external tools generate many empty commits and you want them all
           removed.

           For commits which do not start empty but become empty after
           rebasing, see the --empty flag.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --reapply-cherry-picks, --no-reapply-cherry-picks
           Reapply all clean cherry-picks of any upstream commit instead of
           preemptively dropping them. (If these commits then become empty
           after rebasing, because they contain a subset of already upstream
           changes, the behavior towards them is controlled by the --empty
           flag.)

           By default (or if --no-reapply-cherry-picks is given), these
           commits will be automatically dropped. Because this necessitates
           reading all upstream commits, this can be expensive in repos with a
           large number of upstream commits that need to be read.

           --reapply-cherry-picks allows rebase to forgo reading all upstream
           commits, potentially improving performance.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --allow-empty-message
           No-op. Rebasing commits with an empty message used to fail and this
           option would override that behavior, allowing commits with empty
           messages to be rebased. Now commits with an empty message do not
           cause rebasing to halt.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

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

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

       --show-current-patch
           Show the current patch in an interactive rebase or when rebase is
           stopped because of conflicts. This is the equivalent of git show
           REBASE_HEAD.

       -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. This is the default.

           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.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       -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 empties all patches from the <branch>, which
           makes little sense.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       -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.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --rerere-autoupdate, --no-rerere-autoupdate
           Allow the rerere mechanism to update the index with the result of
           auto-conflict resolution if possible.

       -S[<keyid>], --gpg-sign[=<keyid>], --no-gpg-sign
           GPG-sign commits. The keyid argument is optional and defaults to
           the committer identity; if specified, it must be stuck to the
           option without a space.  --no-gpg-sign is useful to countermand
           both commit.gpgSign configuration variable, and earlier --gpg-sign.

       -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. Implies
           --apply.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --no-ff, --force-rebase, -f
           Individually replay 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.

           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).

       --fork-point, --no-fork-point
           Use reflog to find a better common ancestor between <upstream> and
           <branch> when calculating which commits have been introduced by
           <branch>.

           When --fork-point is active, fork_point will be used instead of
           <upstream> to calculate the set of commits to rebase, where
           fork_point is the result of git merge-base --fork-point <upstream>
           <branch> command (see git-merge-base(1)). If fork_point ends up
           being empty, the <upstream> will be used as a fallback.

           If <upstream> is given on the command line, then the default is
           --no-fork-point, otherwise the default is --fork-point.

           If your branch was based on <upstream> but <upstream> was rewound
           and your branch contains commits which were dropped, this option
           can be used with --keep-base in order to drop those commits from
           your branch.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --ignore-whitespace, --whitespace=<option>
           These flags are passed to the git apply program (see git-apply(1))
           that applies the patch. Implies --apply.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --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)).

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --signoff
           Add a Signed-off-by: trailer to all the rebased commits. Note that
           if --interactive is given then only commits marked to be picked,
           edited or reworded will have the trailer added.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       -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).

           The commit list format can be changed by setting the configuration
           option rebase.instructionFormat. A customized instruction format
           will automatically have the long commit hash prepended to the
           format.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       -r, --rebase-merges[=(rebase-cousins|no-rebase-cousins)]
           By default, a rebase will simply drop merge commits from the todo
           list, and put the rebased commits into a single, linear branch.
           With --rebase-merges, the rebase will instead try to preserve the
           branching structure within the commits that are to be rebased, by
           recreating the merge commits. Any resolved merge conflicts or
           manual amendments in these merge commits will have to be
           resolved/re-applied manually.

           By default, or when no-rebase-cousins was specified, commits which
           do not have <upstream> as direct ancestor will keep their original
           branch point, i.e. commits that would be excluded by git-log(1)'s
           --ancestry-path option will keep their original ancestry by
           default. If the rebase-cousins mode is turned on, such commits are
           instead rebased onto <upstream> (or <onto>, if specified).

           The --rebase-merges mode is similar in spirit to the deprecated
           --preserve-merges but works with interactive rebases, where commits
           can be reordered, inserted and dropped at will.

           It is currently only possible to recreate the merge commits using
           the recursive merge strategy; Different merge strategies can be
           used only via explicit exec git merge -s <strategy> [...]
           commands.

           See also REBASING MERGES and INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       -p, --preserve-merges
           [DEPRECATED: use --rebase-merges instead] 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).

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS 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.
           Any command that fails will interrupt the rebase, with exit code 1.

           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.

           This uses the --interactive machinery internally, but it can be run
           without an explicit --interactive.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --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.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --autosquash, --no-autosquash
           When the commit log message begins with "squash! ..." (or "fixup!
           ..."), and there is already a commit in the todo list that matches
           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). A commit matches the ...  if the commit
           subject matches, or if the ...  refers to the commit's hash. As a
           fall-back, partial matches of the commit subject work, too. The
           recommended way to create fixup/squash commits is by using the
           --fixup/--squash options of git-commit(1).

           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.

           See also INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS below.

       --autostash, --no-autostash
           Automatically create a temporary stash entry 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.

       --reschedule-failed-exec, --no-reschedule-failed-exec
           Automatically reschedule exec commands that failed. This only makes
           sense in interactive mode (or when an --exec option was provided).

INCOMPATIBLE OPTIONS
       The following options:

       o   --apply

       o   --committer-date-is-author-date

       o   --ignore-date

       o   --ignore-whitespace

       o   --whitespace

       o   -C

       are incompatible with the following options:

       o   --merge

       o   --strategy

       o   --strategy-option

       o   --allow-empty-message

       o   --[no-]autosquash

       o   --rebase-merges

       o   --preserve-merges

       o   --interactive

       o   --exec

       o   --no-keep-empty

       o   --empty=

       o   --reapply-cherry-picks

       o   --edit-todo

       o   --root when used in combination with --onto

       In addition, the following pairs of options are incompatible:

       o   --preserve-merges and --interactive

       o   --preserve-merges and --signoff

       o   --preserve-merges and --rebase-merges

       o   --preserve-merges and --empty=

       o   --keep-base and --onto

       o   --keep-base and --root

       o   --fork-point and --root

BEHAVIORAL DIFFERENCES
       git rebase has two primary backends: apply and merge. (The apply
       backend used to be known as the am backend, but the name led to
       confusion as it looks like a verb instead of a noun. Also, the merge
       backend used to be known as the interactive backend, but it is now used
       for non-interactive cases as well. Both were renamed based on
       lower-level functionality that underpinned each.) There are some subtle
       differences in how these two backends behave:

   Empty commits
       The apply backend unfortunately drops intentionally empty commits, i.e.
       commits that started empty, though these are rare in practice. It also
       drops commits that become empty and has no option for controlling this
       behavior.

       The merge backend keeps intentionally empty commits by default (though
       with -i they are marked as empty in the todo list editor, or they can
       be dropped automatically with --no-keep-empty).

       Similar to the apply backend, by default the merge backend drops
       commits that become empty unless -i/--interactive is specified (in
       which case it stops and asks the user what to do). The merge backend
       also has an --empty={drop,keep,ask} option for changing the behavior of
       handling commits that become empty.

   Directory rename detection
       Due to the lack of accurate tree information (arising from constructing
       fake ancestors with the limited information available in patches),
       directory rename detection is disabled in the apply backend. Disabled
       directory rename detection means that if one side of history renames a
       directory and the other adds new files to the old directory, then the
       new files will be left behind in the old directory without any warning
       at the time of rebasing that you may want to move these files into the
       new directory.

       Directory rename detection works with the merge backend to provide you
       warnings in such cases.

   Context
       The apply backend works by creating a sequence of patches (by calling
       format-patch internally), and then applying the patches in sequence
       (calling am internally). Patches are composed of multiple hunks, each
       with line numbers, a context region, and the actual changes. The line
       numbers have to be taken with some fuzz, since the other side will
       likely have inserted or deleted lines earlier in the file. The context
       region is meant to help find how to adjust the line numbers in order to
       apply the changes to the right lines. However, if multiple areas of the
       code have the same surrounding lines of context, the wrong one can be
       picked. There are real-world cases where this has caused commits to be
       reapplied incorrectly with no conflicts reported. Setting diff.context
       to a larger value may prevent such types of problems, but increases the
       chance of spurious conflicts (since it will require more lines of
       matching context to apply).

       The merge backend works with a full copy of each relevant file,
       insulating it from these types of problems.

   Labelling of conflicts markers
       When there are content conflicts, the merge machinery tries to annotate
       each side's conflict markers with the commits where the content came
       from. Since the apply backend drops the original information about the
       rebased commits and their parents (and instead generates new fake
       commits based off limited information in the generated patches), those
       commits cannot be identified; instead it has to fall back to a commit
       summary. Also, when merge.conflictStyle is set to diff3, the apply
       backend will use "constructed merge base" to label the content from the
       merge base, and thus provide no information about the merge base commit
       whatsoever.

       The merge backend works with the full commits on both sides of history
       and thus has no such limitations.

   Hooks
       The apply backend has not traditionally called the post-commit hook,
       while the merge backend has. Both have called the post-checkout hook,
       though the merge backend has squelched its output. Further, both
       backends only call the post-checkout hook with the starting point
       commit of the rebase, not the intermediate commits nor the final
       commit. In each case, the calling of these hooks was by accident of
       implementation rather than by design (both backends were originally
       implemented as shell scripts and happened to invoke other commands like
       git checkout or git commit that would call the hooks). Both backends
       should have the same behavior, though it is not entirely clear which,
       if any, is correct. We will likely make rebase stop calling either of
       these hooks in the future.

   Interruptability
       The apply backend has safety problems with an ill-timed interrupt; if
       the user presses Ctrl-C at the wrong time to try to abort the rebase,
       the rebase can enter a state where it cannot be aborted with a
       subsequent git rebase --abort. The merge backend does not appear to
       suffer from the same shortcoming. (See
       https://lore.kernel.org/git/20200207132152.GC2868@szeder.dev/ for
       details.)

   Commit Rewording
       When a conflict occurs while rebasing, rebase stops and asks the user
       to resolve. Since the user may need to make notable changes while
       resolving conflicts, after conflicts are resolved and the user has run
       git rebase --continue, the rebase should open an editor and ask the
       user to update the commit message. The merge backend does this, while
       the apply backend blindly applies the original commit message.

   Miscellaneous differences
       There are a few more behavioral differences that most folks would
       probably consider inconsequential but which are mentioned for
       completeness:

       o   Reflog: The two backends will use different wording when describing
           the changes made in the reflog, though both will make use of the
           word "rebase".

       o   Progress, informational, and error messages: The two backends
           provide slightly different progress and informational messages.
           Also, the apply backend writes error messages (such as "Your files
           would be overwritten...") to stdout, while the merge backend writes
           them to stderr.

       o   State directories: The two backends keep their state in different
           directories under .git/

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
           mismerges by tests done on actual merge commits taken from Linux
           2.6 kernel development history. Additionally this can detect and
           handle merges involving renames, but currently cannot make use of
           detected copies. 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 in 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; note that, unlike ours, there is
               no theirs merge strategy to confuse this merge option with.

           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,
           ignore-cr-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, --ignore-space-at-eol, and
               --ignore-cr-at-eol.

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

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

               o   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.

           no-renames
               Turn off rename detection. This overrides the merge.renames
               configuration variable. See also git-diff(1) --no-renames.

           find-renames[=<n>]
               Turn on rename detection, optionally setting the similarity
               threshold. This is the default. This overrides the
               merge.renames configuration variable. See also git-diff(1)
               --find-renames.

           rename-threshold=<n>
               Deprecated synonym for find-renames=<n>.

           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.

       To interrupt the rebase (just like an "edit" command would do, but
       without cherry-picking any commit first), use the "break" command.

       If you just want to edit the commit message for a commit, replace the
       command "pick" with the command "reword".

       To drop a commit, replace the command "pick" with "drop", or just
       delete the matching line.

       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 recreate merge commits, e.g. 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 -r --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:

       o   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.

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

       o   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.

       o   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.

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

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

       o   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  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 a full history
           rewriting command like filter-repo[2].

   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 (unless
       --reapply-cherry-picks is given). 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:

       o   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).)

       o   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!

REBASING MERGES
       The interactive rebase command was originally designed to handle
       individual patch series. As such, it makes sense to exclude merge
       commits from the todo list, as the developer may have merged the
       then-current master while working on the branch, only to rebase all the
       commits onto master eventually (skipping the merge commits).

       However, there are legitimate reasons why a developer may want to
       recreate merge commits: to keep the branch structure (or "commit
       topology") when working on multiple, inter-related branches.

       In the following example, the developer works on a topic branch that
       refactors the way buttons are defined, and on another topic branch that
       uses that refactoring to implement a "Report a bug" button. The output
       of git log --graph --format=%s -5 may look like this:

           *   Merge branch 'report-a-bug'
           |\
           | * Add the feedback button
           * | Merge branch 'refactor-button'
           |\ \
           | |/
           | * Use the Button class for all buttons
           | * Extract a generic Button class from the DownloadButton one

       The developer might want to rebase those commits to a newer master
       while keeping the branch topology, for example when the first topic
       branch is expected to be integrated into master much earlier than the
       second one, say, to resolve merge conflicts with changes to the
       DownloadButton class that made it into master.

       This rebase can be performed using the --rebase-merges option. It will
       generate a todo list looking like this:

           label onto

           # Branch: refactor-button
           reset onto
           pick 123456 Extract a generic Button class from the DownloadButton one
           pick 654321 Use the Button class for all buttons
           label refactor-button

           # Branch: report-a-bug
           reset refactor-button # Use the Button class for all buttons
           pick abcdef Add the feedback button
           label report-a-bug

           reset onto
           merge -C a1b2c3 refactor-button # Merge 'refactor-button'
           merge -C 6f5e4d report-a-bug # Merge 'report-a-bug'

       In contrast to a regular interactive rebase, there are label, reset and
       merge commands in addition to pick ones.

       The label command associates a label with the current HEAD when that
       command is executed. These labels are created as worktree-local refs
       (refs/rewritten/<label>) that will be deleted when the rebase finishes.
       That way, rebase operations in multiple worktrees linked to the same
       repository do not interfere with one another. If the label command
       fails, it is rescheduled immediately, with a helpful message how to
       proceed.

       The reset command resets the HEAD, index and worktree to the specified
       revision. It is similar to an exec git reset --hard <label>, but
       refuses to overwrite untracked files. If the reset command fails, it is
       rescheduled immediately, with a helpful message how to edit the todo
       list (this typically happens when a reset command was inserted into the
       todo list manually and contains a typo).

       The merge command will merge the specified revision(s) into whatever is
       HEAD at that time. With -C <original-commit>, the commit message of the
       specified merge commit will be used. When the -C is changed to a
       lower-case -c, the message will be opened in an editor after a
       successful merge so that the user can edit the message.

       If a merge command fails for any reason other than merge conflicts
       (i.e. when the merge operation did not even start), it is rescheduled
       immediately.

       At this time, the merge command will always use the recursive merge
       strategy for regular merges, and octopus for octopus merges, with no
       way to choose a different one. To work around this, an exec command can
       be used to call git merge explicitly, using the fact that the labels
       are worktree-local refs (the ref refs/rewritten/onto would correspond
       to the label onto, for example).

       Note: the first command (label onto) labels the revision onto which the
       commits are rebased; The name onto is just a convention, as a nod to
       the --onto option.

       It is also possible to introduce completely new merge commits from
       scratch by adding a command of the form merge <merge-head>. This form
       will generate a tentative commit message and always open an editor to
       let the user edit it. This can be useful e.g. when a topic branch turns
       out to address more than a single concern and wants to be split into
       two or even more topic branches. Consider this todo list:

           pick 192837 Switch from GNU Makefiles to CMake
           pick 5a6c7e Document the switch to CMake
           pick 918273 Fix detection of OpenSSL in CMake
           pick afbecd http: add support for TLS v1.3
           pick fdbaec Fix detection of cURL in CMake on Windows

       The one commit in this list that is not related to CMake may very well
       have been motivated by working on fixing all those bugs introduced by
       switching to CMake, but it addresses a different concern. To split this
       branch into two topic branches, the todo list could be edited like
       this:

           label onto

           pick afbecd http: add support for TLS v1.3
           label tlsv1.3

           reset onto
           pick 192837 Switch from GNU Makefiles to CMake
           pick 918273 Fix detection of OpenSSL in CMake
           pick fdbaec Fix detection of cURL in CMake on Windows
           pick 5a6c7e Document the switch to CMake
           label cmake

           reset onto
           merge tlsv1.3
           merge cmake

BUGS
       The todo list presented by the deprecated --preserve-merges
       --interactive does not represent the topology of the revision graph
       (use --rebase-merges instead). Editing commits and rewording their
       commit messages should work fine, but attempts to reorder commits tend
       to produce counterintuitive results. Use --rebase-merges in such
       scenarios instead.

       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

        2. filter-repo
           https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo

Git 2.27.0                        06/01/2020                     GIT-REBASE(1)

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