Git Advanced Workflows

Master advanced Git techniques to maintain clean history, collaborate effectively, and recover from any situation with confidence.

When to Use This Skill

• Cleaning up commit history before merging (rebase)
• Applying specific commits across branches (cherry-pick)
• Finding commits that introduced bugs (bisect)
• Working on multiple features simultaneously (worktrees)
• Recovering from Git mistakes or lost commits (reflog)
• Synchronizing diverged branches

Workflow

1. Context: Are you cleaning history, recovering lost work, or isolating a bug?
2. Safety: Always create a backup branch before destructive operations (git branch backup-before-rebase).
3. Execute: Use the specific command (rebase -i, bisect, reflog).
4. Verify: Check log/tests to ensure integrity.
5. Push: If history changed, use --force-with-lease.

Instructions

1. Interactive Rebase (The History Editor)

Use to squash typos, reword messages, or reorder commits.

git rebase -i HEAD~5
# Commands: pick, reword, edit, squash, fixup, drop

• Autosquash: git commit --fixup HEAD -> git rebase -i --autosquash main.

2. Cherry-Picking (The Sniper)

Apply specific commits to another branch without merging.

git cherry-pick abc1234
git cherry-pick abc1234..def5678 # Range
git cherry-pick -n abc1234 # Stage only (no commit)

3. Git Bisect (The Bug Hunter)

Binary search to find the exact commit that broke something.

git bisect start
git bisect bad              # Current is broken
git bisect good v1.0.0      # v1.0.0 was working
# Git checks out middle commit... you test...
git bisect good # or bad
# Repeat until found
git bisect reset

4. Worktrees (The Multitasker)

Check out multiple branches in parallel folders. No more stash/switch ping-pong.

git worktree add ../feature-folder feature/new-stuff
# Work there...
git worktree remove ../feature-folder

5. Reflog (The Time Machine)

Recover “lost” commits after a hard reset or delete.

git reflog
# Find the hash BEFORE you messed up (e.g., abc1234)
git reset --hard abc1234
# Or restore a deleted branch
git branch recovered-branch abc1234

Resources

• Rebase Guide
• Conflict Resolution
• Recovery & Safety