git-advanced-workflows

Git Advanced Workflows

Advanced Git techniques for clean history, effective collaboration, and confident recovery.

Triggers

Process

Phase 1: Assess the Situation

1. Identify which workflow applies (rebase, cherry-pick, bisect, worktree, recovery)
2. Check current branch state: git status, git log --oneline -10
3. Create a safety branch before any destructive operation: git branch backup-<timestamp>
   • macOS/Linux (bash/zsh): git branch backup-$(date +%s)
   • Windows PowerShell: git branch backup-$(Get-Date -UFormat %s)

Phase 2: Execute the Workflow

Rebase: Clean Up Feature Branch Before PR

git checkout feature/user-auth
# Record the remote tip BEFORE rewriting. A later fetch moves the tracking
# ref, so reading it at push time would let the lease overwrite new commits.
git fetch origin
EXPECTED_REMOTE_SHA=$(git rev-parse origin/feature/user-auth)
git rebase -i main
# Squash "fix typo" commits, reword messages, reorder logically
git push --force-with-lease="refs/heads/feature/user-auth:$EXPECTED_REMOTE_SHA" \
  origin HEAD:refs/heads/feature/user-auth

Rebase operations: pick (keep), reword (change message), edit (amend content), squash (combine keeping message), fixup (combine discarding message), drop (remove).

Autosquash pattern:

git commit --fixup HEAD        # Mark as fixup for previous commit
git rebase -i --autosquash main  # Auto-marks fixup commits

Split a commit:

git rebase -i HEAD~3          # Mark commit with 'edit'
git reset HEAD^               # Reset commit, keep changes in working tree (unstaged)
git add file1.py && git commit -m "feat: add validation"
git add file2.py && git commit -m "feat: add error handling"
git rebase --continue