How to identify conflicting commits by hash during git rebase?

Question

When I encounter a merge conflict using git rebase, how can I identify the source of the conflict in terms of commits, rather than just file difference

Answer 1

Many times you'll be in the middle of a rebase and want to skip those commits that aren't needed.

Unfortunately, while git status tells you that you're in the middle of commit and recommends using git rebase --continue git rebase --skip or git rebase --abort, it doesn't tell you what commit you're currently on.

So it can oftentimes be hard to know if you should git rebase --skip or not.

However, there is still a way to find out which commit you're on by running:

git log -1 $(< .git/rebase-apply/original-commit)

Answer 2

Show the current/failed commit

This may be a new feature, but REBASE_HEAD gives you the commit where you're currently stopped (e.g. if the commit failed to apply). If you want to see the commit in full you can use

git show REBASE_HEAD

As a more verbose alternative, you can use git rebase --show-commit-patch. The docs say they are equivalent.

Show what's changed since you started your work

If you want to see what's changed between where you're rebasing from and where you're rebasing to, you can get a diff between the two branches. For example, if you're rebasing from master onto origin/master you can use:

git diff master..origin/master

Or if you want to see the changes as individual commits:

git log -p master..origin/master

If you'd prefer to use the hash or maybe are coming back to a rebase after a while and can't remember which branches you're rebasing, you can use git status to see the two branches. For example:

You are currently rebasing branch 'master' on 'b5284275'

Then, to see what's changed you can use:

git diff master..b5284275