How to rebase one Git repository onto another one?

git merge repository rebase
kroimon picture kroimon · Mar 11, 2010 · Viewed 24.9k times · Source

I had one Git repository (A) which contains the development of a project until a certain point. Then I lost the USB stick this repo A was on. Luckily I had a backup of the latest commit, so I could create a new repository (B) later where I imported the latest project's state and continue development. Now I recovered that lost USB stick, so I have two Git repositories.

I think I just have to rebase repo B onto repo A somehow, but I have no idea how to do that, maybe using fetch/pull and rebase?

Answer

Josh Lee picture Josh Lee · Mar 11, 2010

If A and B are not the same repo (you created B by using the latest working copy you had), you have to use a graft to pretend that they have common history.

Let’s assume you’ve added A as a remote for B as per VonC’s answer, and the repo looks like this1:

~/B$ git tnylog 
* 6506232 (HEAD, master) Latest work on B
* 799d6ae Imported backup from USB stick
~/B$ git tnylog A/master
* 33b5b16 (A/master) Head of A
* 6092517 Initial commit

Create a graft telling the root of B that its parent is the head of A:

echo '799d6aeb41095a8469d0a12167de8b45db02459c 33b5b16dde3af6f5592c2ca6a1a51d2e97357060' \
 >> .git/info/grafts

Now the two histories above will appear as one when you request the history for B. Making the graft permanent is a simple git filter-branch with no arguments. After the filter-branch, though, you aren’t on any branch, so you should git branch -D master; git checkout -b master.

1 git tnylog = git log --oneline --graph --decorate

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