[...]
With this patch, the goodness of the Git garden shears comes to `git
rebase -i` itself. Passing the `--recreate-merges` option will generate
a todo list that can be understood readily, and where it is obvious
how to reorder commits. New branches can be introduced by inserting
`label` commands and calling `merge - <label> <oneline>`. And once this
mode has become stable and universally accepted, we can deprecate the
design mistake that was `--preserve-merges`.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <redacted>
---

diff --git a/git-rebase--interactive.sh b/git-rebase--interactive.sh

@@ -900,6 +900,7 @@ fi
 if test t != "$preserve_merges"
 then
        git rebase--helper --make-script ${keep_empty:+--keep-empty} \
+               ${recreate_merges:+--recreate-merges} \

                $revisions ${restrict_revision+^$restrict_revision} >"$todo" ||
        die "$(gettext "Could not generate todo list")"

diff --git a/git-rebase.sh b/git-rebase.sh

@@ -262,6 +264,10 @@ do
+       --recreate-merges)
+               recreate_merges=t
+               test -z "$interactive_rebase" && interactive_rebase=implied
+               ;;
        --preserve-merges)
                preserve_merges=t
                test -z "$interactive_rebase" && interactive_rebase=implied