Gotcha: Git rebase onto wrong branch

Accidentally rebased onto the wrong branch, duplicating commits or losing work.

Recovery from bad rebase:

# DURING rebase (something looks wrong)
git rebase --abort  # Undo completely, go back to before rebase

# AFTER rebase completed (already finished)
# Use reflog to find the pre-rebase state
git reflog
# Look for: 'rebase (start): checkout <branch>'
# The entry BEFORE that is your pre-rebase state

# abc1234 HEAD@{5}: rebase (start): checkout main
# def5678 HEAD@{6}: commit: My work     <- THIS ONE

git reset --hard def5678  # Go back to pre-rebase state

# If you already pushed the bad rebase
# Create a backup branch first!
git branch backup-bad-rebase
git reset --hard def5678
git push --force-with-lease  # Overwrite remote with correct history

Prevention:

# Always create a backup before risky operations
git branch backup-feature
git rebase main
# If something goes wrong:
git reset --hard backup-feature

# Use --onto for targeted rebases
# Rebase only commits from feature, not from old-base
git rebase --onto new-base old-base feature

# Verify before force pushing
git log --oneline main..HEAD  # See what commits will be pushed

Rebase rewrites commit history. Once you reset to a reflog entry, the rewritten commits become unreachable and will be garbage collected.

Recovering from incorrect git rebase operations