replaying git commits

TL;DR

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# To replay the last N commits from current branch onto another branch
git rebase --onto other_branch HEAD~N
# Same as above, but does so on a NEW branch so your current branch is unaffected
git rebase --onto other_branch HEAD~N new_branch
# Same again, except replay the last N commits from some feature branch
git rebase --onto other_branch feature_branch~N new_branch

Replaying commits on another branch

Sometimes you may find yourself in a situation where you have done some work on a branch, but the starting point of your branch is not what you wish. This is probably quite rare if you have a merge-heavy git workflow, but may be common if your workflow involves a lot of rebasing onto a master branch.

For example, say your workflow starts by creating a feature branch off master. You work on feature for a little while, commit and send feature down the pipeline to be tested. Then you have some work that is not directly part of feature but depends on the work done on that branch so you create a branch feature+ off of feature. Now you have three branches with the follow histories:

While you’re working someone merges a new commit to master.

Now you need to pull these new changes into your work to make sure everything is working with the latest code, so you rebase feature onto master and end up with the following:

Depending on how complicated the changes were, using git rebase feature to rebase feature+ onto feature may not do what you want. Those branches no longer share the F1 commit because F1 was changed to F1' when feature was rebased onto master. However, it is easy to use git rebase to replay just the commits you want on top of the latest feature. In this case, while on the feature+ branch you can run the following to replay the F+ commit onto the current history of feature and end up with the history that you want:

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git rebase --onto feature HEAD~1

Now all three branches with the proper git histories.

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