How to abort a git rebase from inside vim during interactive editing

Question

When I do an interactive rebase, e.g.

git rebase -i HEAD~3

the rebase interactive editor (vim in my case) opens to let me edit the commits to rebase

pick c843ea2 Set Vim column limit to 80 (OS X)
pick fc32eac Add Bash alias for `pbcopy` (OS X)
....

If I now decide that I want to abort the rebase and quit vim using :q the rebase starts anyway. I'm using git version 1.9.0.msysgit.0 on windows.

Sure I can just delete all pick lines, but it might be a lot to do if I rebase a longer history. Is there another way?

How can I quit the rebase interactive editor (vim) and abort the rebase?

Would you prefer to use a different editor, such as Notepad? If so, I have a solution for that — Zombo, Dec 01 '14 at 22:22

Telmo Costa · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-04T16:01:07.400

356

If you exit the editor with an error code, the rebase will be aborted.

To exit with an error code on vim, do

:cq

See here and vimdoc here.

edited May 04 '18 at 16:01

answered Apr 02 '15 at 17:48

Telmo Costa

score 53 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 04 '18 at 06:20

53

Just delete all the lines that are not comments from the file. Then save it to the default supplied path and exit the editor.

As a result git will just do nothing in this rebase.

To delete all lines in vim you can use

:%d|x

Then save and quit.

edited Jul 04 '18 at 06:20

mit

answered Dec 01 '14 at 11:35

Zombo

this is not the case for the merge commits. try doing the interactive rebase to include at least one merge commit and compare the result with the original state. – Mladen B. Oct 19 '18 at 08:59

score 13 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 09 '15 at 03:34

13

If you're using Notepad++ on Windows for instance:

CtrlA to select everything, then Del or Backspace to delete and CtrlS save. Git will abort the rebase if the file is empty.

You may also hit CtrlC in the command prompt where git is running to stop the current rebase command. Then run git rebase --abort to revert it.

answered Sep 09 '15 at 03:34

CodeManX

this is the general way to solve this problem, no matter if you're using vim or any other editor. thanks a lot! :) – Mladen B. Oct 19 '18 at 09:00

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 09 '16 at 05:38

3

Delete all text in your text editor screen, then save the file with the default supplied path.

answered Dec 09 '16 at 05:38

mcandre

4 Answers4