GitReb

A small interface over git rebase -i's common usage

Easy non-interactive interactive rebasing with action applied only to specified revision;
Allows using :/<text> notation easily;
Uses --root if needed to apply action to root commit.

Usage

gitreb <action> <revision>

This does the same as calling git rebase -i <revision>^ and then replacing the first word with <action> in EDITOR.

To use as a git subcommand, insert the following in your .gitconfif:

[alias]
    autorebase = ! /path/to/gitreb/script

You can then do:

git autorebase edit :/some nasty bug

If <revision> is the root commit, then GitReb does the same as calling git rebase -i --root and replacing the first word with <action>.
If <revision> uses the :/<text> notation, then GitReb does the same as calling git rebase -i HEAD^{/<text>}^.

This is not explicitely coded, merely the only side-effect of using git rev-parse to find the commit then applying <commit>^ to the result.

AFAIK, :/<text> is the only notation to which you can't just apply the lone caret modifier.

I wanted to be able to use the following command intuitively:

$ git rebase -i :/<text>^   # DOES NOT DO AS EXPECTED

I wrote this on Stack Overflow which describes the situation.

I also don't like having to use EDITOR for such a simple to describe operation.

This StackOverflow comment mostly answers both concerns by using git rev-parse and $GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR with sed -i.

I was compelled to

use ed which unlike sed is supposed to edit files in place,
make the script shell-agnostic,
use default edit behaviour instead of always using reset HEAD^, (though you could still reuse the selected commit message with commit -c, I didn't want the default behaviour to change).
Use <commit>^ instead of <commit>^^,
Use --root if needed