Introducing git-revise

(Aug. 6, 2019): Added the "What git-revise is not" section.

At Mozilla I often end up building my changes in a patch stack, and used git rebase -i to make changes to commits in response to review comments etc. Unfortunately, with a repository as large as mozilla-central , git rebase -i has some downsides:

It's slow! Rebase operates directly on the worktree, so it performs a full checkout of each commit in the stack, and frequently refreshes worktree state. On large repositories (especially on NTFS) that can take a long time. It triggers rebuilds! Because rebase touches the file tree, some build systems (like gecko's recursive-make backend) rebuild unnecessarially. It's stateful! If the rebase fails, the repository is in a weird mid-rebase state, and in edge cases I've accidentally dropped commits due to other processes racing on the repository lock. It's clunky! Common tasks (like splitting & rewording commits) require multiple steps and are unintuitive.

Naturally, I did the only reasonable thing: Build a brand-new tool.

Introducing git-revise !

git-revise is a history editing tool designed for the patch-stack workflow. It's fast, non-destructive, and aims to provide a familiar, powerful, and easy to use re-imagining of the patch stack workflow.

It's fast

I would never claim to be a benchmarking expert , but git-revise performs substantially better than rebase for small history editing tasks . In a test applying a single-line change to a mozilla-central commit 20 patches up the stack I saw a 15x speed improvement.

$ time bash -c 'git commit --fixup=$TARGET; EDITOR=true git rebase -i --autosquash $TARGET~' <snip> real 0m10.733s

$ time git revise $TARGET <snip> real 0m0.685s

git-revise accomplishes this using an in-memory rebase algorithm operating directly on git's trees, meaning it never has to touch your index or working directory, avoiding expensive disk I/O!

It's handy

git-revise isn't just a faster git rebase -i , it provides helpful commands, flags, and tools which make common changes faster, and easier:

Fixup Fast

$ git add . $ git revise HEAD~~

Running git revise $COMMIT directly collects changes staged in the index, and directly applies them to the specified commit. Conflicts are resolved interactively, and a warning will be shown if the final state of the tree is different from what you started with!

With an extra -e , you can update the commit message at the same time, and -a will stage your changes, so you don't have to!

Split Commits

$ git revise -c $COMMIT Select changes to be included in part [ 1 ] : diff --git b/file.txt a/file.txt <snip> Apply this hunk to index [ y,n,q,a,d,e,? ] ?

Sometimes, a commit needs to be split in two, perhaps because a change ended up in the wrong commit. The --cut flag (and cut interactive command) provides a fast way to split a commit in-place.

Running git revise --cut $COMMIT will start a git add -p -style hunk selector, allowing you to pick changes for part 1, and the rest will end up in part 2.

No more tinkering around with edit during a rebase to split off that comment you accidentally added to the wrong commit!

Interactive Mode

$ git revise -i

git-revise has a git rebase -i -style interactive mode, but with some quality-of-life improvements, on top of being fast:

Implicit Base Commit

If a base commit isn't provided, --interactive will implicitly locate a safe base commit to start from, walking up from HEAD , and stopping at published & merge commits. Often git revise -i is all you need!

The index Todo

Staged changes in the index automatically appear in interactive mode, and can be moved around and treated like any other commit in range. No need to turn it into a commit with a dummy name before you pop open interactive mode & squash it into another commit!

Bulk Commit Rewording

$ git revise -ie

Ever wanted to update a bunch of commit messages at once? Perhaps they're all missing the bug number? Well, git revise -ie has you covered. It'll open a special Interactive Mode where each command is prefixed with a ++ , and the full commit message is present after it.

Changes made to these commit messages will be applied before executing the TODOs, meaning you can edit them in bulk. I use this constantly to add bug numbers, elaborate on commit details, and add reviewer information to commit messages.

++ pick f5a02a16731a Bug ??? - My commit summary, r=? The full commit message body follows! ++ pick fef1aeddd6fb Bug ??? - Another commit, r=? Another commit's body!

Autosquash Support

$ git revise --autosquash

If you're used to git rebase -i --autosquash , revise works with you. Running git revise --autosquash will automatically reorder and apply fixup commits created with git commit --fixup=$COMMIT and similar tools, and thanks to the implicit base commit, you don't even need to specify it.

You can even pass the -i flag if you want to edit the generated todo list before running it.

It's non-destructive

git-revise doesn't touch either your working directory, or your index. This means that if it's killed while running, your repository won't be changed, and you can't end up in a mid-rebase state while using it.

Problems like conflicts are resolved interactively, while the command is running, without changing the actual files you've been working on. And, as no files are touched, git-revise won't trigger any unnecessary rebuilds!

What git-revise is not

(Section Added: Aug. 6, 2019)

git-revise does not aim to be a complete replacement for git rebase -i . It has a specific use-case in mind, namely incremental changes to a patch stack, and excludes features which rebase supports.

In my personal workflow, I still reach for git rebase [-i] when I need to rebase my local commits due to new upstream changes, and I imagine there are people with advanced workflows who cannot use git revise .

Working directory changes:

git-revise does not modify your working directory or index while it's running. This is part of what allows it to be so fast. However, it also means that certain rebase features, such as the edit interactive command, are not possible.

This also is why git revise -i does not support removing commits from within a patch series: doing so would require changing the state of your working directory due to the now-missing commit. If you want to drop a commit you can instead move it to the end of the list and mark it as index . The commit will disappear from history, but your index and working directory won't be changed. A quick git reset --hard HEAD will update your index and working directory.

These restrictions may change in the future. Features like this have been requested, and it might be useful to allow opting-in to dropping commits on the floor or pausing mid-revise.

Merging through renames & copies:

git-revise uses a custom merge backend, which doesn't attempt to handle file renames or copies. For changes which need to be merged or rebased through file renames and copies, git rebase is a better option.

Complex history rewriting:

git rebase supports rebasing complex commits, such as merges. In contrast, git-revise does not currently aim to support these more advanced features of git rebase .

Interested?

Awesome!

git-revise is a MIT-licensed pure-Python 3.6+ package, and can be installed with pip :

$ python3 -m pip install --user git-revise

You can also check out the source on GitHub, and read the manpage online, or by running man git revise in your terminal.