git rebase: “error: cannot stat 'file': Permission denied”

Question

I\'m using git, and made a small commit followed by a large one. I decided to use git rebase to squash the two commits together before pushing them. (I\'ve ne

Answer 1

This error can also be caused by the fact that files are still "locked" because of prior git actions. It has to do with how the Windows filesystem layer works. I once read a nice explanation on this, but I can't remember where.

In that case however, since it is basically a race condition, all you have to do is continue your interrupted rebase process. Unfortunately this happens to me all the time, so I wrote this little dangerous helper to keep my rebases going:

#!/bin/sh

set -e

git checkout .
git clean -df
git rebase --continue

If you want to be extra sure, you can use git rebase --edit-todo to check if the next commit to be applied is really the one that failed to be applied before. Use git clean -dn to make sure you do not delete any important files.