Re: Announce: Linux-next (Or Andrew's dream :-))

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Tue, 12 Feb 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> 	git rebase --onto $new $old

..and in case it wasn't clear - this is just a general way of saying "move 
the commits on this branch since $old to be based on top of $new" instead.

You can pick out those old/new commit ID's using gitk or whatever if you 
wish. Neither the $new or the $old needs to even be an existing branch - 
just pick them with gitk. 

So if you literally want to just move the top 5 commits (assuming those 
top five cmmits are just a nice linear thing you did) from the current 
branch to be on top on another branch instead, you can literally do this:

	# save this state, maybe we want to keep it around. Call it "old"
	git branch old-branch

	# rebase the top five commits onto $target
	git rebase --onto $target HEAD~5

ta-daa - all done. The branch you are on will now have been rewritten to 
be the top five commits moved to be on top of the $target you chose, and 
if you want to get back the old state, it's nicely squirrelled away in 
"old-branch".

(That obviously assumes no merge conflicts - you'll have to resolve those 
yourself ;)

Of course, if you didn't even want to save the old branch, just skip the 
first step. If you have reflogs enabled (and git does that by default in 
any half-way recent version), you can always find it again, even without 
having to do "git fsck --lost-found", at least as long as you don't delete 
that branch, and it hasn't gotten pruned away (kept around for the next 90 
days by default, iirc)

		Linus