| name | active-rebaser |
| description | Use when main has moved locally in court-vision and the other branches are now stale, or when asked to rebase every branch and worktree onto main. Covers the per-branch rebase, when a conflict may be resolved versus abandoned, and the force-with-lease push approval. |
Rebasing every branch onto main
One pass over every local branch. Rebase what rebases cleanly, resolve only
the conflicts that are mechanical, abandon the rest untouched, report, then
push only what is approved branch by branch.
Nothing is pushed without a yes for that specific branch.
0. Preflight — record state before touching anything
git fetch -p
git rev-parse --short main origin/main
git status --porcelain
git worktree list
git branch --format='%(refname:short) %(upstream:short)'
Stop if the working tree is dirty. Stop if main is behind origin/main —
rebasing onto a stale main just means doing it twice.
Record origin/<branch> for every branch now, before any rebase. These
shas are the push leases in step 4 and cannot be recovered later:
git for-each-ref --format='%(refname:short) %(objectname)' refs/remotes/origin
1. Enumerate
Every local branch except main. Two kinds, and they are handled differently:
| Branch is | Rebase it |
|---|
| Checked out in a real worktree (including the main checkout) | In place, in that worktree |
| Not checked out anywhere | In a throwaway worktree |
git worktree add hard-fails with fatal: '<branch>' is already used by worktree at ... when the branch is checked out. Read git worktree list
first rather than discovering this from an exit code — piping the failure
through head swallows it and reports success.
Never check a branch out in the user's main working tree to rebase it.
2. Rebase, one branch at a time
WT=$(mktemp -d)/rb-$BRANCH
git worktree add -q "$WT" "$BRANCH"
git -C "$WT" rebase main
Exit 0 → clean. Record ahead/behind, remove the worktree, next branch.
git -C "$WT" rev-list --left-right --count main...HEAD
git worktree remove "$WT"
Exit non-zero → conflict. Size it before deciding anything.
Sizing a conflict
git diff --numstat --diff-filter=U reports 0 0 for conflicted files.
It is useless here. Count the markers instead:
git -C "$WT" diff --name-only --diff-filter=U | while read -r f; do
awk -v F="$f" '
/^<<<<<<< /{inside=1; n=0; hunks++}
inside{n++}
/^>>>>>>> /{inside=0; total+=n}
END{printf "%s hunks=%d lines=%d\n", F, hunks+0, total+0}
' "$WT/$f"
done
Resolve or abandon
Resolve only when the conflict is one of these, or small enough to hold
in your head:
| Class | Resolution |
|---|
bun.lock | Take main's side, then bun install and stage the result |
package.json version field | Take main's side |
| Both sides added different entries to the same import block, array, or export list | Union both, in the file's existing order |
| Vanishes under formatting | oxfmt --write the file, then stage |
| ≤ 20 conflicted lines across ≤ 3 files, and both sides are legible | Read both sides and resolve |
Anything else — overlapping edits to the same logic, a conflict spanning
more than 3 files, more than 20 conflicted lines, or two sides you cannot
confidently reconcile — abandon it:
git -C "$WT" rebase --abort
git worktree remove "$WT"
Abort restores the branch exactly. That is the point: an abandoned branch is
a clean outcome, not a failure. Do not partially resolve, do not --skip a
commit, and do not drop a commit to make a rebase go through.
After a resolve, continue and verify:
git -C "$WT" add <resolved-files>
GIT_EDITOR=true git -C "$WT" rebase --continue
If a second conflict appears in a later commit of the same branch, size it
under the same rules. A branch that keeps conflicting has earned an abort.
Never --force a worktree removal to escape a stuck rebase; abort first.
3. Report
One row per branch, after every branch is done. Report before asking for any
push.
branch result detail
audit/a11y rebased clean, 3 commits replayed
audit/perf rebased resolved bun.lock (took main)
audit/security up to date already on main
audit/styles abandoned 14 conflicted lines across 6 files
audit/tech-debt rebased resolved 1 import block in charts.ts
State what was resolved and how, per branch. "Resolved conflicts" alone is
not a report — the user is about to approve a force push based on it.
4. Approve, then push
Ask per branch. Not one prompt for all of them, and not one prompt per
report. Skipping a branch is a normal answer.
Push with the explicit lease, using the sha recorded in step 0:
git push --force-with-lease="$BRANCH:$RECORDED_SHA" origin "$BRANCH"
Bare --force-with-lease is not safe here. It compares against
origin/<branch>, and any git fetch between the rebase and the push
refreshes that ref — the lease then passes and silently overwrites whatever
someone else pushed in the meantime. This run fetches in step 0, and
.husky/pre-push runs git fetch -p on every push. The explicit
=<branch>:<sha> form compares against a literal sha and is immune.
A ! [rejected] ... (stale info) means the remote branch moved during the
run. Do not retry, do not re-lease, do not --force. Report it and move on;
that branch needs a human.
Checklist
