How do I use 'git rebase -i' to rebase all changes in a branch?

Question

Here\'s an example:

>git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)
>git checkout -b test-branch
>vi test.c
>git add t         


        

Answer 1

Use gitk (*nix), or gitx (OS X) or similar on other platforms, and have a look at which commit was the root of your branch. Then run:

git rebase -i 

For example, I have a repository that I inspected using gitx:

Now that I know the root hash I can run this:

git rebase -i 38965ed29d89a4136e47b688ca10b522b6bc335f

And my editor pops up with this and I can rearrange/squash/whatever as I please.

pick 50b2cff File 1 changes.
pick 345df08 File 2 changes.
pick 9894931 File 3 changes.
pick 9a62b92 File 4 changes.
pick 640b1f8 File 5 changes.
pick 1c437f7 File 6 changes.
pick b014597 File 7 changes.
pick b1f52bc File 8 changes.
pick 40ae0fc File 9 changes.

# Rebase 38965ed..40ae0fc onto 38965ed
#
# Commands:
#  pick = use commit
#  edit = use commit, but stop for amending
#  squash = use commit, but meld into previous commit
#
# If you remove a line here THAT COMMIT WILL BE LOST.
# However, if you remove everything, the rebase will be aborted.
#

I'm sure there's some magic way to convince git to figure out the root of the tree automatically, but I don't know what it is.

EDIT: That magic is this:

git log master..other_feature | cat

Which will show you all the commits on that branch, and piping to cat will disable the pager so you see the first commit immediately.

EDIT: combining the above gives a fully automated solution:

git rebase -i  `git log master..other_feature --pretty=format:"%h" | tail -n 1`~