Master advanced Git workflows including rebasing, cherry-picking, bisect, worktrees, and reflog to maintain clean history and recover from any situation. Use when managing complex Git histories, collaborating on feature branches, or troubleshooting repository issues.
Master advanced Git techniques to maintain clean history, collaborate effectively, and recover from any situation with confidence.
When to Use This Skill
Cleaning up commit history before merging
Applying specific commits across branches
Finding commits that introduced bugs
Working on multiple features simultaneously
Recovering from Git mistakes or lost commits
Managing complex branch workflows
Preparing clean PRs for review
Synchronizing diverged branches
Core Concepts
1. Interactive Rebase
Interactive rebase is the Swiss Army knife of Git history editing.
Common Operations:
pick: Keep commit as-is
reword: Change commit message
edit: Amend commit content
squash: Combine with previous commit
fixup: Like squash but discard message
drop: Remove commit entirely
Basic Usage:
# Rebase last 5 commits
git rebase -i HEAD~5
# Rebase all commits on current branch
git rebase -i $(git merge-base HEAD main)
# Rebase onto specific commit
git rebase -i abc123
2. Cherry-Picking
Apply specific commits from one branch to another without merging entire branches.
# Cherry-pick single commit
git cherry-pick abc123
# Cherry-pick range of commits (exclusive start)
git cherry-pick abc123..def456
# Cherry-pick without committing (stage changes only)
git cherry-pick -n abc123
# Cherry-pick and edit commit message
git cherry-pick -e abc123
3. Git Bisect
Binary search through commit history to find the commit that introduced a bug.
# Start bisect
git bisect start
# Mark current commit as bad
git bisect bad
# Mark known good commit
git bisect good v1.0.0
# Git will checkout middle commit - test it
# Then mark as good or bad
git bisect good # or: git bisect bad
# Continue until bug found
# When done
git bisect reset
Automated Bisect:
# Use script to test automatically
git bisect start HEAD v1.0.0
git bisect run ./test.sh
# test.sh should exit 0 for good, 1-127 (except 125) for bad
4. Worktrees
Work on multiple branches simultaneously without stashing or switching.
# List existing worktrees
git worktree list
# Add new worktree for feature branch
git worktree add ../project-feature feature/new-feature
# Add worktree and create new branch
git worktree add -b bugfix/urgent ../project-hotfix main
# Remove worktree
git worktree remove ../project-feature
# Prune stale worktrees
git worktree prune
5. Reflog
Your safety net - tracks all ref movements, even deleted commits.