Re: Removing a commit from a local branch

On 2009.01.12 11:42:24 +1300, Chris Packham wrote:

Hi List,

I'm part of a development team using git. We use a maintainer model
where developers send patches/pull requests to a maintainer who
applies the patches to a local branch, decides if they're good or not
and pushes the good patches to the public repository.

What I want to do is script the removal of a bad patch so that the
maintainer identifies a patch in his local branch, sends an email to
the author telling them why their patch is being rejected then removes
the commit for that patch. Using git log a script can extract the
author email address, hash and headline of each commit. Based on that
information scripting the email is easy enough. Now I come to using
git rebase to remove the bad commit based on its hash which leads me
to my question - How do I refer to a commit based on the hash of its
parent?

Consider the following example. The maintainer has the following branch locally

  todeliver: A-B-C-D

He is happy with commits A, C and D but wants to reject B. Ideally I
want to be able to say
  git rebase --onto <parent of B> <child of B> todelvier

You don't want <child of B> there, just B.

git rebase --onto <onto> <upstream> <branch>

Rebases the commits from the range <upstream>..<branch>, and that
_excludes_ the commit (referenced by) <upstream>.

So:
git rebase --onto B^ B todeliver

Works on: B..todeliver == todeliver --not B
And that range contains commits C and D.

Björn