GIT-ABSORB(1) git absorb GIT-ABSORB(1) NAME git-absorb - Automatically absorb staged changes into your current branch SYNOPSIS git absorb [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] DESCRIPTION You have a feature branch with a few commits. Your teammate reviewed the branch and pointed out a few bugs. You have fixes for the bugs, but you don't want to shove them all into an opaque commit that says fixes, because you believe in atomic commits. Instead of manually finding commit SHAs for git commit --fixup, or running a manual interactive rebase, do this: $ git add $FILES_YOU_FIXED $ git absorb --and-rebase (or) $ git absorb $ git rebase -i --autosquash master git absorb will automatically identify which commits are safe to modify, and which indexed changes belong to each of those commits. It will then write fixup! commits for each of those changes. You can check its output manually if you don't trust it, and then fold the fixups into your feature branch with git's built-in autosquash functionality. FLAGS -r, --and-rebase Run rebase if successful. See also the REBASE_OPTIONS below. -n, --dry-run Don't make any actual changes --no-limit Remove absorb stack limit. Has no effect when used with --base This will consider all commits until either root, merge commit, or a commit by other author (unless --force-author is used) Which is why you should be careful when using this flag. --force-author Generate fixups to commits not made by you --force-detach Generate fixups even when on a non-branch (detached) HEAD -F, --one-fixup-per-commit Only generate one fixup per commit -f, --force Skip all safety checks as if all --force-* flags were given. See those flags to understand the full effect of supplying --force. -s, --squash Create squash commits instead of fixup commits. When this flag is used, "fixup commit" may be read as "squash commit" throughout the documentation. All configuration relating to fixup commits will apply to the squash commits instead. -w, --whole-file Match the first commit touching the same file as the current hunk. Use this with care! -h, --help Prints help information -V, --version Prints version information -v, --verbose Display more output OPTIONS -b , --base Use this commit as the base of the absorb stack -m , --message A simple commit message body that will be used for all generated fixup commits. --gen-completions Generate completions [possible values: bash, fish, nushell, zsh, powershell, elvish] -- Options to pass to git rebase after generating commits. Must be the last arguments and the -- must be present. Only valid when --and-rebase is used. USAGE 1. git add any changes that you want to absorb. By design, git absorb will only consider content in the git index. 2. git absorb. This will create a sequence of commits on HEAD. Each commit will have a fixup! message indicating the message (if unique) or SHA of the commit it should be squashed into. 3. If you are satisfied with the output, git rebase -i --autosquash to squash the fixup! commits into their predecessors. You can set the GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR environment variable if you don't need to edit the rebase TODO file. 4. If you are not satisfied (or if something bad happened), git reset --soft PRE_ABSORB_HEAD to the pre-absorption commit to recover your old state. (You can also find the commit in question with git reflog.) And if you think git absorb is at fault, please file an issue. CONFIGURATION STACK SIZE When run without --base, git-absorb will only search for candidate commits to fixup within a certain range (by default 10). If you get an error like this: WARN stack limit reached, limit: 10 edit your local or global .gitconfig and add the following section: [absorb] maxStack=50 # Or any other reasonable value for your project Stack size can also be disabled temporarily for one command (see --no-limit) ONE FIXUP PER FIXABLE COMMIT By default, git-absorb will generate separate fixup commits for every absorbable hunk. To always generate only 1 fixup commit for all hunks that absorb into the same commit, edit your local or global .gitconfig and add the following section: [absorb] oneFixupPerCommit = true AUTO-STAGE ALL CHANGES IF NOTHING STAGED By default, git-absorb will only consider files that you've staged to the index via git add. However, sometimes one wants to try and absorb from all changes, which would require to stage them first via git add .. To avoid this extra step, set [absorb] autoStageIfNothingStaged = true which tells git-absorb, when no changes are staged, to auto-stage them all, create fixup commits where possible, and unstage remaining changes from the index. FIXUP TARGET ALWAYS SHA By default, git-absorb will create fixup commits with their messages pointing to the target commit's summary, and if there are duplicate summaries, will fall back to pointing to the target's SHA. Instead, can always point to the target's SHA via: [absorb] fixupTargetAlwaysSHA = true GENERATE FIXUPS FOR COMMITS NOT AUTHORED BY YOU By default, git-absorb will only generate fixup commits for commits that were authored by you. To always generate fixups for any author's commits, edit your local or global .gitconfig and add the following section: [absorb] forceAuthor = true GENERATE FIXUPS ON DETACHED HEAD By default, git-absorb will not generate fixup commits when HEAD is not a branch ("is detached"). To always generate fixups on detached HEADs, edit your local or global .gitconfig and add the following section: [absorb] forceDetach = true GENERATE SQUASH COMMITS INSTEAD OF FIXUPS By default, git-absorb will generate fixup commits. To instead generate squash commits, edit your local or global .gitconfig and add the following section: [absorb] createSquashCommits = true When this option is set, "fixup commit" may be read as "squash commit" throughout the documentation. All configuration relating to fixup commits will apply to the squash commits instead. GITHUB PROJECT https://github.com/tummychow/git-absorb AUTHOR Stephen Jung git-absorb 03/27/2026 GIT-ABSORB(1)