Git rebase final-commit does not exist

Question

I am in the middle of a long rebase, everything was going well until one of my git rebase --continue's where I got this:

$ git rebase --continue
Applying: A git commit
fatal: Unable to create '/Users/me/mycode/.git/index.lock': File exists.

Another git process seems to be running in this repository, e.g.
an editor opened by 'git commit'. Please make sure all processes
are terminated then try again. If it still fails, a git process
may have crashed in this repository earlier:
remove the file manually to continue.

I didn't remove that file because it no longer existed. I guess maybe a git GUI program tried to refresh while I was rebasing or something. Ok fine. I tried again, but now I get

$ git rebase --continue
fatal: cannot resume: .git/rebase-apply/final-commit does not exist.

It's true it doesn't exist:

$ ls .git/rebase-apply/
0001  0005  0009  0013  0017  0021  abort-safety  last       orig-head          rebasing   threeway
0002  0006  0010  0014  0018  0022  apply-opt     messageid  patch              rewritten  utf8
0003  0007  0011  0015  0019  0023  head-name     next       patch-merge-index  scissors   
0004  0008  0012  0016  0020  0024  keep          onto       quiet              sign    

Is there any way out of this mess? It is a long rebase so I do not want to git rebase --abort.

Answer 1

I don’t know how to fix your existing rebase but I would work around by doing another one:

cp .git/rebase-merge/git-rebase-todo ~/another-folder # backup what is to be done
git branch failed-rebase                              # save the current point as a branch
git rebase --abort

Then you can continue the failed rebase with:

git rebase -i --onto failed-rebase <original rebase parameters here>

It opens the editor. You should make the to-do list match what you intended originally using the original git-rebase-todo file. Save the file, quit the editor and the rebase will start. After it finishes, remove the temporary branch.