Re: [PATCH 2/3] rebase: accept -<number> as another way of saying HEAD~<number>

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 4:37 PM, Matthieu Moy
[off-list ref] wrote:

Michael Haggerty [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Or perhaps "-NUM" should fail with an error message if any of the last
NUM commits are merges.  In that restricted scenario (which probably
accounts for 99% of rebases), "-NUM" is equivalent to "HEAD~NUM".

Makes sense to me. So, -NUM would actually mean "rebase the last NUM
commits" (as well as being an alias for HEAD~NUM), but would fail when
it does not make sense (with an error message explaining the situation
and pointing the user to HEAD~N if this is what he wanted).

Agreed, but..

This would actually be a feature for me: I often want to rebase "recent
enough" history, and when my @{upstream} isn't well positionned, I
randomly type HEAD~N without remembering what N should be. When N is too
small, the rebase doesn't reach the interesting commit, and when N is
too big, it reaches a merge commit and I get a bunch of commits I'm not
allowed to edit in my todo-list. Then I have to abort the commit
manually. With -N failing on merge commits, the rebase would abort
itself automatically.

would "git rebase -i --fork-point" be what you need instead? It's a
new thing, but may be what we actually should use, not this -NUM..
-- 
Duy