Speeding up interactive rebase in JetBrains IDEs | The JetBrains Platform Blog

JetBrains has focused on optimizing the interactive rebase process in its IDEs by implementing in-memory operations to improve speed, particularly for large repositories where traditional methods became slow. This optimization was developed into an internship project and involves a technical deep dive into Git's internal mechanisms, like blobs, trees, and commits, enabling faster commit-history editing without impacting the working tree or index unnecessarily. The new approach uses low-level Git commands to rebuild commit sequences in memory, significantly reducing execution times from tens of seconds to just a few seconds on average, despite some remaining challenges on different operating systems. The improvements, which have been tested internally and in early access program builds, are set to be enabled by default in the 2026.1 release, making operations like rewording, dropping, or squashing commits more efficient. The project drew inspiration from community contributions and other Git performance projects and is expected to enhance the user experience by making commit editing faster and less disruptive.