📚 restack

restack augments the experience of performing an interactive Git rebase to make it more friendly to workflows that involve lots of interdependent branches.

For more background on why this exists and the workflow it facilitates, see Automatically Restacking Git Branches.

Installation

Use one of the following options to install restack.

• If you use Homebrew on macOS or Linuxbrew on Linux, run the following command to download and install a pre-built binary.

  brew install abhinav/tap/restack
  

• If you use ArchLinux, install it from AUR using the restack-bin package package for a pre-built binary or the restack package package to build it from source.

  git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/restack-bin.git
  cd restack-bin
  makepkg -si
  

  With an AUR helper like yay, run the following instead:

  yay -S restack-bin # pre-built binary
  yay -S restack     # build from source
  

• Download a pre-built binary from the GitHub Releases page and place it on your $PATH.

• Build it from source if you have Rust installed.

  cargo install restack
  

Setup

restack works by installing itself as a Git sequence.editor. You can set this up manually or let restack do it for you automatically.

Automatic Setup

Run restack setup to configure git to use restack.

restack setup

Manual Setup

If you would rather not have restack change your .gitconfig, you can set it up manually by running:

git config sequence.editor "restack edit"

See restack edit --help for the different options accepted by restack edit.

Usage

restack automatically recognizes branches being touched by the rebase and adds rebase instructions which update these branches as their heads move.

The generated instruction list also includes an opt-in commented-out section that will push these branches to the remote.

For example, given,

o master
 \
  o A
  |
  o B (feature1)
   \
    o C
    |
    o D (feature2)
     \
      o E
      |
      o F
      |
      o G (feature3)
       \
        o H (feature4, HEAD)

Running git rebase -i master from branch feature4 will give you the following instruction list.

pick A
pick B
exec git branch -f feature1

pick C
pick D
exec git branch -f feature2

pick E
pick F
pick G
exec git branch -f feature3

pick H

# Uncomment this section to push the changes.
# exec git push -f origin feature1
# exec git push -f origin feature2
# exec git push -f origin feature3

So any changes made before each exec git branch -f will become part of that branch and all following changes will be made on top of that.

Credits

Thanks to @kriskowal for the initial implementation of this tool as a script.

FAQ

Can I make restacking opt-in?

If you don't want restack to do its thing on every git rebase, you can make it opt-in by introducing a new Git command.

To do this, first make sure you don't have restack set up for the regular git rebase:

git config --global --unset sequence.editor

Next, create a file named git-restack with the following contents.

#!/bin/bash
exec git -c sequence.editor="restack edit" rebase -i "$@"

Mark it as executable and place it somewhere on $PATH.

chmod +x git-restack
mv git-restack ~/bin/git-restack

Going forward, you can run git rebase for a plain rebase, and git restack to run a rebase with support for branch restacking.