Git Interactive Rebase Tool

Native cross-platform full feature terminal based sequence editor for interactive rebase in Git 1.7.8+. Written in Rust using ncurses.

This is the documentation for the development build. For the current stable release please use the 1.1.x documentation.

Install

• Cargo
• Arch
• Debian
• FreeBSD
• MacOS
  • Homebrew
  • Manual
• Windows

Configure

Most systems

git config --global sequence.editor interactive-rebase-tool

Windows

Standard Command Pompt

git config --global sequence.editor "'C:/path/to/interactive-rebase-tool.exe'"

GitBash

GitBash requires the use of winpty in order to work correctly, so to set the editor use:

git config --global sequence.editor "winpty /c/path/to/interactive-rebase-tool.exe"

Notes

Windows before version 10 has serious rendering issues with saturated darker colors, such as the blue color, that are completely illegible on modern displays. While it is possible to avoid using the saturated colors, a better option is to update the theme using Microsoft's ColorTool.

Usage

interactive-rebase-tool <rebase-todo-filepath>
interactive-rebase-tool --help
interactive-rebase-tool --version

Getting Help

The tool has built-in help that can be accessed by hitting the ? key.

Default Key Bindings

Key bindings can be configured, see configuration for more information.

Key	Mode	Description
Up	All	Move selection up
Down	All	Move selection down
Page Up	All	Move selection up five lines
Page Down	All	Move selection down five lines
q	Normal	Abort interactive rebase
Q	Normal	Immediately abort interactive rebase
w	Normal	Write interactive rebase file
W	Normal	Immediately write interactive rebase file
?	All	Show help
c	Normal	Show commit information
j	All	Move selected commit(s) down
k	All	Move selected commit(s) up
b	Normal	Toggle break action
p	All	Set selected commit(s) to be picked
r	All	Set selected commit(s) to be reworded
e	All	Set selected commit(s) to be edited
s	All	Set selected commit(s) to be squashed
f	All	Set selected commit(s) to be fixed-up
d	All	Set selected commit(s) to be dropped
E	Normal	Edit the command of an exec action
V	All	Enter and exit visual mode

Temporary Override

You can temporarily use a different sequence editor by using the GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR environment variable:

GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR=emacs git rebase -i [<upstream> [<branch>]]

Configuration

The tool can be configured using the git config command. Invalid values are ignored and the default used instead. String values are case-insensitive.

Example

git config --global interactive-rebase-tool.foregroundColor black

Options

Key	Default	Type	Description
autoSelectNext	false	bool	If true, auto select the next line after action modification
breakColor	white	Color	Color used for the break action
diffAddColor	green	Color	Color used for lines and files added in a diff
diffChangeColor	yellow	Color	Color used for lines and files changed in a diff
diffRemoveColor	red	Color	Color used for lines and files removed in a diff
dropColor	red	Color	Color used for the drop action
editColor	blue	Color	Color used for the edit action
fixupColor	magenta	Color	Color used for the fixup action
foregroundColor	white	Color	Color used for most text and the UI
selectedBackgroundColor	35,35,40	Color	Color used as the background color for the selected line
indicatorColor	cyan	Color	Color used for text the indicates or needs to standout
inputAbort	q	String	Key for abort rebase with prompt
inputActionBreak	b	String	Key for setting action to rebase
inputActionDrop	d	String	Key for setting action to drop
inputActionEdit	e	String	Key for setting action to edit
inputActionFixup	f	String	Key for setting action to fixup
inputActionPick	p	String	Key for setting action to pick
inputActionReword	r	String	Key for setting action to reword
inputActionSquash	s	String	Key for setting action to squash
inputConfirmNo	n	String	Key for rejecting a confirmation
inputConfirmYes	y	String	Key for confirming a confirmation
inputEdit	E	String	Key for entering edit mode
inputForceAbort	Q	String	Key for forcing an abort of the rebase
inputForceRebase	W	String	Key for forcing a rebase
inputHelp	?	String	Key for showing the help
inputMoveDownStep	PageDown	String	Key for moving the cursor down by a large step
inputMoveDown	Down	String	Key for moving the cursor down
inputMoveLeft	Left	String	Key for moving the cursor left
inputMoveRight	Right	String	Key for moving the cursor right
inputMoveSelectionDown	j	String	Key for moving the selected line(s) down
inputMoveSelectionUp	k	String	Key for moving the selected line(s) up
inputMoveUp	Up	String	Key for moving the cursor up
inputMoveUpStep	PageUp	String	Key for moving the cursor up by a large step
inputOpenInExternalEditor	!	String	Key for opening the external editor
inputRebase	w	String	Key for rebasing with confirmation
inputShowCommit	c	String	Key for showing the selected commit
inputToggleVisualMode	v	String	Key for toggling visual mode
pickColor	green	Color	Color used for the pick action
rewordColor	yellow	Color	Color used for the reword action
squashColor	cyan	Color	Color used for the squash action
verticalSpacingCharacter	~	String	Vertical spacing character. Can be set to an empty string.

Special Keys

Key	Description
PageDown	Page Down key
Down	Down arrow key
Left	Left arrow key
Right	Right arrow key
Up	Up arrow key
PageUp	Page Up key

Valid Color Values

The valid colors are the eight original 8 ANSI colors. They are black, blue, cyan, green, magenta, red, white and yellow. Each terminal controls the exact color for these color names. On terminals that support 256 colors, a color triplet with the format <red>,<green>,<blue> can be used. Each color has a range of 0 to 255 with 255, 255, 255 resulting in white and 0,0,0 resulting in black. A value of -1 or transparent can be used to use the default terminal color.

Configuring External Editor

The external editor action will first attempt to start the editor defined by the Git configuration "core.editor", followed by the VISUAL and EDITOR environment variables. Finally, if neither is set the external editor defaults to using vi.

The % character in the value will be replaced with the git rebase todo file. If the % character is not found, then the git rebase todo file will be provided as the last argument.

Development

Install Rust

To start developing the project you will need to install Rust, which can generally be done using rustup.

Setup

Debian and derivatives

You will need build-essential and libncurses5-dev to build the project. Additionally, you will need pkg-config and liblzma-dev if you wish to build a release. They can be installed using apt-get:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libncursesw5-dev
sudo apt-get install pkg-config liblzma-dev

Build and run

Use cargo to build and run the project. From the project root run:

# only build
cargo build --release
# build and run
cargo run <path-to-git-rebase-todo-file>

Format

Use rust-fmt format project. You need to run format with nightly. The current nightly rust version is nightly-2019-09-13. You can find the current nightly rust version in the scripts/format.bash.

# format code before you commit
cargo +nightly-2019-09-13 fmt

Release

Install Cargo Deb

cargo install cargo-deb

Building

cargo build --release
cargo deb

A deb file will be written to target/debian/interactive-rebase-tool_*.deb.

TODO

• Full support for exec action
• Insert action
• Configure key bindings

Related Projects

• rebase-editor is a very similar project written in Node.js.

License

Git Interactive Rebase Tool is released under the GPLv3 license. See LICENSE.

See Third Party Licenses for licenses for third-party libraries used by this project.