After more than a decade of using git, I know that my comfort with rebase, and confidence that I wont make an error I can't undo, comes from knowing that I can always abort. And assuming it wasn't garbage collected, I can always get back to orphaned commits, or the commit before I rebased, as long as I keep their hashes. I can definitely look back on my less confident days as times when I wrongly assumed I was walking a tightrope where screwing up was painful and expensive, and easy to take the wrong path, and abort is the universal solvent to all of that.
I do still find myself tripping up on whether the next appropriate step is to make a commit or continue the rebase, as that is dependent on if you're in a merge conflict or just editing a commit. But even when I get that wrong, and collapse two commits together, abort saves the day.
Reflog is, as the article says, the permission to do all kinds of crazy things, including rebasing. Once you realize any committed state is recoverable for a good period of time it really frees you.
Plus you can always take a note of the commit hash before you do anything crazy. But reflog means you don't have to.
Git really does have all the features you need. I wouldn't argue with anyone complaining about the UI to get there. But it's all in there somewhere.
My fear has never been rebasing itself, but that I make some kind of mistake with a random change conflict and don't notice it because it's not tested for directly. But I'm also not sure if that's categorically a git fear. (Edit: related to this, I think this sort of minor "itchy worry" is grounded in how sometimes conceptually simple diffs look messy during conflict resolution.)
The part where git needs to be “understood” is the entire problem. “Do one thing and do it well” was the whole mantra, which was completely ignored with the disaster that is git. It’s objectively awful.
Another git command I love using is `git add -p`. I always want to commit in chunks as I go but sometimes I wait to long or realize later I could have broken it up. Being able to select only pieces of a file to add to a specific commit is so great. Editing the chunks manually can be a bit intimidating but since it only stages the change you can always restore the file and try again if the diff doesn't look right after the add.
I use that one very frequently (after a fixup, of course) because I want the author date on amended commits to reflect the last time I edited them, not the first time I committed them.
pick a1b2c3d Add user model
s e4f5g6h Fix typo in user model
pick i7j8k9l Add login endpoint
s m0n1o2p WIP debugging login endpoint
s feedbee fixed login endpoint
s deadbee fixed login endpoint
s adebade fixed login endpoint
s abcdefg actually fixed login endpoint
Of course, I get reminded about f/fixup every now and then - think "golly, that will save a second or two" and promptly forget.
The nice thing with magit is how easy it is to manipulate hunks and line, truly editing commits with a surgical precision, all with an handful of keybindings.
rebase interactive is so great, such a powerful tool.
it's the one clear tool that i used all the time. moving to jj, it has lots of amazing tools starting with `jj edit` to go change the past safely & conveniently, with much less pain. but i miss the direct powerful data-driven experience of seeing the timeline in a text file, and picking what to do with it. sometimes.
imo every dev should work to get some competency with git rebase! it's an amazing tool. there's few other systems that give such direct control. it's top layer is, perhaps, the excel of version control?
After more than a decade of using git, I know that my comfort with rebase, and confidence that I wont make an error I can't undo, comes from knowing that I can always abort. And assuming it wasn't garbage collected, I can always get back to orphaned commits, or the commit before I rebased, as long as I keep their hashes. I can definitely look back on my less confident days as times when I wrongly assumed I was walking a tightrope where screwing up was painful and expensive, and easy to take the wrong path, and abort is the universal solvent to all of that.
I do still find myself tripping up on whether the next appropriate step is to make a commit or continue the rebase, as that is dependent on if you're in a merge conflict or just editing a commit. But even when I get that wrong, and collapse two commits together, abort saves the day.
I feel like if you're scared of rebasing, you don't actually understand git.
Reflog is, as the article says, the permission to do all kinds of crazy things, including rebasing. Once you realize any committed state is recoverable for a good period of time it really frees you.
Plus you can always take a note of the commit hash before you do anything crazy. But reflog means you don't have to.
Git really does have all the features you need. I wouldn't argue with anyone complaining about the UI to get there. But it's all in there somewhere.
My fear has never been rebasing itself, but that I make some kind of mistake with a random change conflict and don't notice it because it's not tested for directly. But I'm also not sure if that's categorically a git fear. (Edit: related to this, I think this sort of minor "itchy worry" is grounded in how sometimes conceptually simple diffs look messy during conflict resolution.)
The part where git needs to be “understood” is the entire problem. “Do one thing and do it well” was the whole mantra, which was completely ignored with the disaster that is git. It’s objectively awful.
I use rebase so much but it only feels comfortable because I follow a workflow while rebasing.
Another git command I love using is `git add -p`. I always want to commit in chunks as I go but sometimes I wait to long or realize later I could have broken it up. Being able to select only pieces of a file to add to a specific commit is so great. Editing the chunks manually can be a bit intimidating but since it only stages the change you can always restore the file and try again if the diff doesn't look right after the add.
I also thought rebase was scary long ago. It is scary in the sense if one messes something up without realizing and then pushes to master…
Besides interactive rebase, my other favorite command is “git log —-oneline origin/master..HEAD”
It shows me exactly where I am…
That “-I” really needs to be lowercase.
Yeah I got quite excited that there was somehow a better -i; its almost perfect clickbait
I wish there were a shorthand for
I use that one very frequently (after a fixup, of course) because I want the author date on amended commits to reflect the last time I edited them, not the first time I committed them.But you can make your own alias?
https://git-scm.com/book/ms/v2/Git-Basics-Git-AliasesBig rebase fan here. I find myself using squash the most.
I really love the emacs interactive rebase mode, which comes up by default when you have EDITOR=emacs and do rebase -i.
I know you can do this from within magit as well but I've never gotten into that workflow.
The nice thing with magit is how easy it is to manipulate hunks and line, truly editing commits with a surgical precision, all with an handful of keybindings.
Even just rebase fixup a commit that is a few commits below HEAD is just a few key presses away. Use it many times a week when working.
rebase interactive is so great, such a powerful tool.
it's the one clear tool that i used all the time. moving to jj, it has lots of amazing tools starting with `jj edit` to go change the past safely & conveniently, with much less pain. but i miss the direct powerful data-driven experience of seeing the timeline in a text file, and picking what to do with it. sometimes.
imo every dev should work to get some competency with git rebase! it's an amazing tool. there's few other systems that give such direct control. it's top layer is, perhaps, the excel of version control?