Is anyone else unable to use Interactive Rebase on repositories that don't have a remote?

[thinsoldier]

I made a new remote repository on bitbucket, then cloned it locally.

Made 1 commit and pushed the master branch to remote origin and made sure it's tracking origin/master branch.

Made 5 more commits that I did not push to the remote origin.

Tried interactive rebase. The ui appeared as it should.

I then removed the remote.

Tried interactive rebase again. Got the empty window error.

The command history shows:

git -c diff.mnemonicprefix=false -c core.quotepath=false -c credential.helper=sourcetree -c sequence.editor='/Applications/SourceTree.app/Contents/Resources/stree_gri' -c core.editor='/Applications/SourceTree.app/Contents/Resources/stree_gri' rebase -i --autosquash 
There is no tracking information for the current branch.
Please specify which branch you want to rebase against.
See git-rebase(1) for details

git rebase <branch>

If you wish to set tracking information for this branch you can do so with:

git branch --set-upstream-to=<remote>/<branch> master

...

It seems interactive rebase will only work for repositories that have a remote.

Is that how it should be?

[daniel debela]

am running into the same issue . were you able to resolve this Derek?

[Matt C. Wilson]

Turns out this can be simplified to: 

git rebase -i <commit>

[Matt C. Wilson]

This workflow works for me (no remotes needed):

git log

to figure out which commit (SHA or count) you want to consider your base

git branch RebaseFixup HEAD~3

create a temp RebaseFixup (or whatever name) branch from your rebase point.  e.g. you want to rebase from 4 commits ago, doing pick/squash/fixup/etc on the last 3 commits.  Use the SHA instead if you wish.

git rebase -i RebaseFixup

do your rebase

git branch -d RebaseFixup

cleanup the temporary branch

If anyone finds a better workflow, please also update the StackOverflow question here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30625213/how-do-i-use-gits-interactive-rebase-with-a-local-only-repository-no-remote/30625214#30625214

[Derek B]

I think I am running into this issue as well. Did you ever find out?