Updating dependent branches when rebasing, automagically

Git 2.38, released 2022-10-03, added `git rebase --update-refs`, which automatically updates dependent branches during a rebase, eliminating manual work. The feature was highlighted by Jamie Tanna, a contributor to Renovate, who noted that it saves significant time when rewriting commit messages across stacked PRs on GitHub.

I'm regularly rewriting my history, often with the lens of improving my commit messages https://www.jvt.me/posts/2026/08/17/hand-write-commits/ . On the Renovate https://docs.renovatebot.com/ project, we use a Merge Queue with Squash Merge, which means that if I do want to have atomic commits, I need to split them across PRs, which adds a bit of noise to manage them. Alternatively, I could bypass branch protection requirements to do a rebase merge, but that's the only way to do a rebase merge with a Merge Queue. Now that GitHub has launched stacked PRs https://github.github.com/gh-stack/ , it's now possible to get this behaviour as I wanted, but with the safety of the Merge Queue. But the issue is what happens when I've amended the commit message on one of the PRs, and now need to trigger a cascading rebase? As of ~5 minutes ago, I would have to do that all manually, like a chump. It turns out - thanks to a pointer from Claude Opus 5 - Git has had a capability to improve this for years In Git 2.38 2022-10-03 , git rebase --update-refs was added https://github.blog/open-source/git/highlights-from-git-2-38/ rebase-dependent-branches-with-update-refs , which allows doing exactly this, but without any of the manual work. For instance, if we run git rebase -i origin/HEAD --update-refs , we'll get a prompt in our $EDITOR like so: pick 5c02d5df35 fix platform/bitbucket : remove support for Issues update-ref refs/heads/fix/bitbucket-cloud-issues-removed pick 8dd04828d3 feat http/bitbucket : surface deprecated and removed API functionality update-ref refs/heads/feat/bitbucket-surface-api-deprecations pick e7c9902237 refactor http : add a handleResponse hook update-ref refs/heads/refactor/http-handle-response-hook pick b989428159 feat http/bitbucket : warn when an endpoint announces a deprecation Rebase 7d7f286dc8..b989428159 onto 7d7f286dc8 7 commands Commands: ... u, update-ref <ref = track a placeholder for the <ref to be updated to this position in the new commits. The <ref is updated at the end of the rebase ... This then handles the updating of all the commits on relevant branches - a massive time saver