psykorebase

Easily perform merge-based rebases, i.e. rebases that don't alter history.

You can read the full rationale behind this idea here:

• http://tech.novapost.fr/merging-the-right-way-en.html
• http://tech.novapost.fr/psycho-rebasing-en.html

What?

As a summary:

• git checkout topic && git merge master is the wrong way to merge. Get ready for bad things to happen.
• git checkout topic && git rebase master is better but:
  • it alters history. It is safe from merge conflicts but doesn't guarantee that merged code works. You are losing some intermediate states of your work.
  • it is incompatible with branches you already pushed to shared repository.

psykorebase:

• mimics the "rebase" workflow, but only using merges, no history alteration. It replays "topic" changes on top of "master" in "topic" branch (just like rebase), without deleting "topic" changes.
• preserves all states of your code.
• is compatible with pushed branches.
• the main (and only?) counterpart is that there are more entries in history. There are more commits and more merges. Is that a drawback? If you look carefully, things are clear and clean. But some developers don't like it...

Install

Currently developped to support Python 2.7 and Python 3.4+. Supports Git only for now.

sudo pip install psykorebase

Uninstall with sudo pip uninstall psykorebase.

Usage

Git

Current, in-development prototype

psykorebase MASTER [TOPIC] performs a "psycho-rebase" of TOPIC branch on top of MASTER. Where TOPIC is optional and defaults to current branch.

Example:

git checkout master && git pull --rebase origin master  # Update master.
git checkout topic && psykorebase master  # Psykorebase topic on top of master.

Planned usage (in development)

The default, issues one merge for each (new) commit in topic branch:

git checkout topic && psykorebase master.

The quick'n'dirty, issues one big merge which includes all (new) commits from topic branch (merges heads):

git checkout topic && psykorebase --fast master

The default is safer, the --fast works well when there are poor chances of problems.