Advanced Git Workflows

/git-advanced-workflows

Advanced Git techniques for clean history, cross-branch surgery, and recovery from any situation. The user describes their repo state or pastes git log/git status output; deliver exact command sequences with a safety branch step and an abort path for every risky operation. For working on multiple branches in parallel checkouts, use using-git-worktrees.

When to Use

• Cleaning up commit history before merging
• Applying specific commits across branches
• Finding commits that introduced bugs
• Recovering from Git mistakes or lost commits
• Preparing clean PRs for review
• Synchronizing diverged branches

Core Concepts

1. Interactive Rebase

Interactive rebase is the Swiss Army knife of Git history editing.

Common Operations:

• pick: Keep commit as-is
• reword: Change commit message
• edit: Amend commit content
• squash: Combine with previous commit
• fixup: Like squash but discard message
• drop: Remove commit entirely

Basic Usage:

# Rebase last 5 commits
git rebase -i HEAD~5

# Rebase all commits on current branch
git rebase -i $(git merge-base HEAD main)

# Rebase onto specific commit
git rebase -i abc123

2. Cherry-Picking

Apply specific commits from one branch to another without merging entire branches.

# Cherry-pick single commit
git cherry-pick abc123

# Cherry-pick range of commits (exclusive start)
git cherry-pick abc123..def456

# Cherry-pick without committing (stage changes only)
git cherry-pick -n abc123

# Cherry-pick and edit commit message
git cherry-pick -e abc123

3. Git Bisect

Binary search through commit history to find the commit that introduced a bug.

# Start bisect
git bisect start

# Mark current commit as bad
git bisect bad

# Mark known good commit
git bisect good v1.0.0

# Git will checkout middle commit - test it
# Then mark as good or bad
git bisect good  # or: git bisect bad

# When done
git bisect reset

Automated Bisect:

# Use script to test automatically
git bisect start HEAD v1.0.0
git bisect run ./test.sh

# test.sh should exit 0 for good, 1-127 (except 125) for bad

4. Reflog

Your safety net -- tracks all ref movements, even deleted commits.

# View reflog
git reflog

# View reflog for specific branch
git reflog show feature/branch

# Restore deleted commit
git reflog
# Find commit hash
git checkout abc123
git branch recovered-branch

# Restore deleted branch
git reflog
git branch deleted-branch abc123

Best Practices

1. Always Use --force-with-lease: Safer than --force, prevents overwriting others' work
2. Rebase Only Local Commits: Don't rebase commits that have been pushed and shared
3. Atomic Commits: Each commit should be a single logical change
4. Test Before Force Push: Ensure history rewrite didn't break anything
5. Keep Reflog Aware: Reflog is your safety net for 90 days
6. Branch Before Risky Operations: Create backup branch before complex rebases

# Safe force push
git push --force-with-lease origin feature/branch

# Create backup before risky operation
git branch backup-branch
git rebase -i main
# If something goes wrong
git reset --hard backup-branch

Common Pitfalls

• Rebasing Public Branches: Causes history conflicts for collaborators
• Force Pushing Without Lease: Can overwrite teammate's work
• Losing Work in Rebase: Resolve conflicts carefully, test after rebase
• Not Backing Up Before Experiment: Always create safety branch
• Bisect on Dirty Working Directory: Commit or stash before bisecting

Recovery Commands

# Abort operations in progress
git rebase --abort
git merge --abort
git cherry-pick --abort
git bisect reset

# Restore file to version from specific commit
git restore --source=abc123 path/to/file

# Undo last commit but keep changes
git reset --soft HEAD^

# Undo last commit and discard changes
git reset --hard HEAD^

# Recover deleted branch (within 90 days)
git reflog
git branch recovered-branch abc123

Detailed Patterns and Worked Examples

Extended scenarios (splitting commits, autosquash workflows, rerere, filter-repo notes) live in references/details.md. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.

Usage

/git-advanced-workflows $ARGUMENTS