Git interactive rebase no commits to pick

Solution 1:

Like a non-interactive rebase, you have to rebase onto a particular commit.

With a non-interactive rebase, if you supply a direct ancestor of the current commit then you aren't changing anything; with an interactive rebase you can edit commits after the commit that you are rebasing onto, even if the commit is a direct ancestor of your current commit but you do have to specify this commit that you want to edit onwards from.

I don't know the details of your situation but you might want something like this:

# Opportunity to edit or prune commits between origin/master and current branch
git rebase -i origin/master

or

# Edit some of the last ten commits
git rebase -i HEAD~10 # Note that ~10 uses a tilde("~") not a dash("-"_) !

Solution 2:

rebase -i without a commit range will not display any commits. to rebase the last, say, 7 commits use the following:

git rebase -i HEAD~7

be careful though, that this will rewrite history. don't do it, if the commits are already pushed

for your second question: have a branch with your changes (basically a configuration branch) and regularly merge the other branches into it. this way the changes will not move to other branches