[avaer]

When I interview someone and they are scared of `git rebase -i` it's a huge red flag.

Git rebase has such foundational data structures and concepts that you couldn't pass a serious college programming course without grokking it.

The only reason someone would be scared of git rebase is:

  a) they don't know the basics of programming/software engineering
  b) they are not intellectually curious enough to look into how tf the software they use every day works

You probably shouldn't have engineers like that on your team.

[dtheodor]

An interviewer asking me about git rebase is the huge red flag

[OneDeuxTriSeiGo]

Understanding git rebase is important. You aren't expected to rebase mainline branches regularly but if your team operates on a merge/patchset workflow and isn't just squashing everything down onto main each PR you need to understand how to rebase your changes.

You do your development and use rebase to organise your code into logical commits/patches that can each be reviewed separately. This way when you do your review in github or on the mailing list or whatever you can review each logical change by going through and reviewing the commits separately (which you can do in github by selecting the commit in the dropdown for the review window).

And of course via email based workflows or "stacked patchset" workflows like what tangled provides then you can get deltas between revisions so that you can see what changed in a given commit between rev 1 and rev 2 so that you don't have to re-review the entire patchset/PR, only the stuff that matters (but still broken up into logical changes).

[Valodim]

Genuine question, why? It seems like a reasonable knowledge check that can be answered in a few sentences.

[chrysoprace]

I wonder if it's because it opens in the default visual editor (typically vi/vim) and while I'm primarily a (neo)vim user now, it is certainly not the most intuitive editor to get started with without guidance.

[ablob]

You can always set the editor in your --global or --local config though:

  git config core.editor "vim"

I do agree that using the default editor is a mostly a bad choice due to it being vi/vim rather often.

[chrysoprace]

I know, but as you say that still presents a barrier to entry.

A lot of talented developers that I've worked with use visual git clients exclusively, so imagine their horror when presented not only with an editor they don't use, but also a text-based menu (`git rebase -i`).

[pipes]

I'm genuinely unsure why rebase interactive is more scary than rebase

[bonzini]

Yeah I never use non-interactive rebase. Even if I don't need to edit the todo list, reading it gives me a confirmation of what git will do.