Re: [PATCH 4/4] git-rebase -i: New option to support rebase with merges

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jörg Sommer <joerg@alea.gnuu.de> writes:

> I would like to extend this example:
>
>       o---o---o---o---o---Z
>      /
>     X---Y---A-------B
>          \           \
>           C---D---N---M---E
>                  /
>                 V
> ...
> merge V
>
> V is not a mark.

That's essentially the same as what I drew in a follow-up to the message
you are responding to, using --first-parents to mark D as "not subject to
rewrite but still interesting".

As I explained there, a bigger issue is how you would express the set of
commits that you would want to rewrite and use intact.  In your
illustration, you would want to rewrite N but you want to reuse V.
"rebase Z E" or "rebase --onto Z X E" would include V (and all of its
ancestors that cannot be reached from Z or X that you did not draw) in the
set to be rewritten.  Extending the input to the rebase command to use
revision range syntax and saying it as Z..E (or X..E) would not help
either.