SYNOPSIS

git rebase-update [-v | --verbose] [-n | --no-fetch] [-k | --keep-going]

DESCRIPTION

Brings all branches up-to-date with their tracking branches. This involves several phases:

Preparation

If you currently have a branch checked out, any changes on that branch are frozen (See git-freeze(1) for more detail). Additionally, the current branch is recorded for the Restoration phase later (see CONFIGURATION VARIABLES for details on depot-tools.rebase-update.starting-branch).

Fetching

All branches are examined to find their upstream references. The correct set of git remotes is determined, and fetched accordingly. Note that if any branches have a tag as their upstream, we are forced to pull all remotes.

Pass --no-fetch to skip this phase.

Rebasing

All branches are rebased in topological order from roots (upstreams) to leaves. Each branch is rebased from its marked merge-base (see CONFIGURATION VARIABLES) to the branch tip on top of its parent branch. If the parent branch is frozen (see git-freeze(1)), the branch will be rebased onto the last non-freeze commit on the parent branch.

Things get interesting when there are merge conflicts on rebase. The most common cause for conflicts is when your branch has been committed to the upstream in squashed form, ala git-squash-branch(1), which is what git-cl(1) and the Commit Queue will do. Because of that, git rebase-update will attempt to squash your conflicted branch to see if the squashed version applies cleanly to its upstream.

If it does not apply cleanly, then your original (non-squashed) branch will be left in mid-rebase and git rebase-update will exit. You can deal with this like any other conflicted rebase. When you’re done, just git rebase-update again to pick up where you left off.

If you’d like to rebase all rebaseable branches in one pass and manually process the unrebaseable ones later, use -k or --keep-going. Cleanup will not happen until all branches apply cleanly.

Cleanup

Once all the branches have been rebased, any empty branches (i.e. branches with no commits on them) are removed. If a branch is removed in this fashion, any branches which depend on it are reparented to the parent of the removed branch (see git-reparent-branch(1)).

Restoration

git rebase-update checks out the branch that you started on, and thaws it, if necessary (see git-thaw(1)). If the branch you started on got cleaned up, git rebase-update will checkout the root ref (defaults to origin's default branch, as configured by depot-tools.upstream, see git-new-branch(1)).

OPTIONS

-k
--keep-going

Keep processing past failed rebases.

-n
--no-fetch

Skip the git fetch phase of rebase-update.

-v
--verbose

More text than your terminal can handle.

--current

Only rebase the current branch.

CONFIGURATION VARIABLES

depot-tools.rebase-update.starting-branch

When git rebase-update first runs, it will record the current branch here so that when it completes successfully, it will return back to the same branch you started on, even if git rebase-update is interrupted due to rebase conflicts. When git rebase-update completes successfully, this configuration variable is removed.

branch.<name>.dormant

If true, will cause rebase-update to skip all processing on the branch. Useful for old/high-conflict branches which you want to keep for posterity, but don’t want to deal with when running git rebase-update

branch.<name>.base

Holds the base reference for this branch. By default this is equivalent to git merge-base <name> <name>@{upstream}. However, it can diverge if <name>@{upstream} is manually rebased. In this case, it correctly preserves the value it had before, where git merge-base would now report the wrong value.

All of the tools in the depot_tools(1) suite collude to keep this value as up-to-date as possible, including git-reparent-branch(1), and git-new-branch(1). git-map(1) also shows the location of these marker values in white.

git-mark-merge-base(1) allows easy manual interaction for this value, in the unlikely event that it gets out of sync.

SUGGESTED ALIASES

Some common short-hand aliases. Feel free to add these to your ~/.gitconfig file.

[alias]
  reup = rebase-update

SEE ALSO

git-new-branch(1), git-reparent-branch(1), git-rename-branch(1), git-upstream-diff(1), git-freeze(1), git-mark-merge-base(1)

CHROMIUM DEPOT_TOOLS

Part of the chromium depot_tools(7) suite. These tools are meant to assist with the development of chromium and related projects. Download the tools by checking out the git repository.