Subject: Re: rebase -i: quick/inline reword

From: Sergey Organov <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 May 2020 13:49:29 +0300

Solomon Ucko <[email-masked]> writes:

> Currently, `rebase -i` allows modifying the commit titles in the list, and
> the modified title is shown in the lists of previous and next commands, but
> the changes are not saved. Currently, modifying just the titles of many
> commits requires `reword`ing each one and separately and consecutively editing
> each message, which is annoying when making small, repetitive edits, especially
> since it requires double-checking each one separately. It would be much easier
> if there were a mode where any changes to the commit titles in the list
> modified the commits' titles. Maybe `git rebase -i --reword`?
>
> Any thoughts, suggestions, questions, etc.?

Yes, thanks for raising the issue!

I've needed the feature many times myself, but then, as Junio already
described in his reply, I realized it's likely a no-go with current
design of the todo lists. Changing just the titles probably still could
be implemented in a useful way (as with your --reword suggestion), but
its application is in fact rather limited, so maybe isn't worth the
trouble.

It'd be really nice if it were possible to, say, search&replace in, or
spell-check, interactively, all the commit messages (including titles)
of a bunch of commits to be published, all in a single file handled by
single rebase run.

This is a feature that I'd like to see being considered if and when we
decide to design a history editing feature that is more powerful than
current dos-batch-files-alike processing enhanced with comefrom labels.

-- Sergey