git-revise - Man Page

Efficiently update, split, and rearrange git commits

git revise is a git(1) subcommand to efficiently update, split, and rearrange commits. It is heavily inspired by git-rebase(1), however tries to be more efficient and ergonomic for patch-stack oriented workflows.

By default, git revise will apply staged changes to <target>, updating HEAD to point at the revised history. It also supports splitting commits, rewording commit messages.

Unlike git-rebase(1), git revise avoids modifying working directory and index state, performing all merges in-memory, and only writing them when necessary. This allows it to be significantly faster on large codebases, and avoid invalidating builds.

If --autosquash or --interactive is specified, the <target> argument may be omitted or given as the special value :option:--root. If it is omitted, git revise will consider a range of unpublished commits on the current branch. If given as :option:--root, all commits including the root commit will be considered.

Options

General options

-a, --all: Stage changes to tracked files before revising.
-p, --patch: Interactively stage hunks from the worktree before revising.
--no-index: Ignore staged changes in the index.
--reauthor: Reset target commit's author to the current user.
--ref <gitref>: Working branch to update; defaults to HEAD.
-S, --gpg-sign, --no-gpg-sign: GPG-sign commits. Overrides both the commit.gpgSign and revise.gpgSign git configurations.

Main modes of operation

-i, --interactive

Rather than applying staged changes to <target>, edit a todo list of actions to perform on commits after <target>. See Interactive Mode.

--autosquash, --no-autosquash

Rather than directly applying staged changes to <target>, automatically perform fixup or squash actions marked with fixup! or squash! between <target> and the current HEAD. For more information on what these actions do, see Interactive Mode.

These commits are usually created with git commit --fixup=<commit> or git commit --squash=<commit>, and identify the target with the first line of its commit message.

This option can be combined with --interactive to modify the generated todos before they're executed.

If the --autosquash option is enabled by default using a configuration variable, the option --no-autosquash can be used to override and disable this setting. See Configuration.

-c, --cut

Interactively select hunks from <target>. The chosen hunks are split into a second commit immediately after the target.

After splitting is complete, both commits' messages are edited.

See the "Interactive Mode" section of git-add(1) to learn how to operate this mode.

-e, --edit

After applying staged changes, edit <target>'s commit message.

This option can be combined with --interactive to allow editing of commit messages within the todo list. For more information on, see Interactive Mode.

-m <msg>, --message <msg>

Use the given <msg> as the new commit message for <target>. If multiple -m options are given, their values are concatenated as separate paragraphs.

--version

Print version information and exit.

Configuration

Configuration is managed by git-config(1).

revise.autoSquash: If set to true, imply --autosquash whenever --interactive is specified. Overridden by --no-autosquash. Defaults to false. If not set, the value of rebase.autoSquash is used instead.
revise.gpgSign: If set to true, GPG-sign new commits; defaults to false. This setting overrides the original git configuration commit.gpgSign and may be overridden by the command line options --gpg-sign and --no-gpg-sign.

Conflict Resolution

When a conflict is encountered, git revise will attempt to resolve it automatically using standard git mechanisms. If automatic resolution fails, the user will be prompted to resolve them manually.

There is currently no support for using git-mergetool(1) to resolve conflicts.

No attempt is made to detect renames of files or directories. git revise may produce suboptimal results across renames. Use the interactive mode of git-rebase(1) when rename tracking is important.

Notes

A successful git revise will add a single entry to the reflog, allowing it to be undone with git reset @{1}. Unsuccessful git revise commands will leave your repository largely unmodified.

No merge commits may occur between the target commit and HEAD, as rewriting them is not supported.

See git-rebase(1) for more information on the implications of modifying history on a repository that you share.

Interactive Mode

git revise supports an interactive mode inspired by the interactive mode of git-rebase(1).

This mode is started with the last commit you want to retain "as-is":

git revise -i <after-this-commit>

The special target --root is available to revise everything up to the root commit:

git revise -i --root

An editor will be fired up with the commits in your current branch after the given commit. If the index has any staged but uncommitted changes, a <git index> entry will also be present.

pick 8338dfa88912 Oneline summary of first commit
pick 735609912343 Summary of second commit
index 672841329981 <git index>

These commits may be re-ordered to change the order they appear in history. In addition, the pick and index commands may be replaced to modify their behaviour. If present, index commands must be at the bottom of the list, i.e. they can not be followed by non-index commands.

If -e was specified, the full commit message will be included, and each command line will begin with a ++. Any changes made to the commit messages in this file will be applied to the commit in question, allowing for simultaneous editing of commit messages during the todo editing phase.

++ pick 8338dfa88912
Oneline summary of first commit

Body of first commit

++ pick 735609912343
Summary of second commit

Body of second commit

++ index 672841329981
<git index>

The following commands are supported in all interactive modes:

index

Do not commit these changes, instead leaving them staged in the index. Index lines must come last in the file.

pick

Use the given commit as-is in history. When applied to the generated index entry, the commit will have the message <git index>.

squash

Add the commit's changes into the previous commit and open an editor to merge the commits' messages.

fixup

Like squash, but discard this commit's message rather than editing.

reword