Should you squash commits?

Asked by: Iration Nieto

As a general rule, when merging a pull request from a feature branch with a messy commit history, you should squash your commits. There are exceptions, but in most cases, squashing results in a cleaner Git history that’s easier for the team to read.

Why you shouldn’t squash and merge?

Due to the way that squash commits work, they result in Bitbucket and Git showing the source branches as unmerged. So while you may end up with a clean commit history, you will get a noisy and dirty repository history if you don’t take steps to prevent it.

What happens when you squash commits?

What does it mean to squash commits in Git? Squashing is a way to rewrite your commit history; this action helps to clean up and simplify your commit history before sharing your work with team members. Squashing a commit in Git means that you are taking the changes from one commit and adding them to the Parent Commit.

Should you squash commits when merging into master?

3 Answers. Show activity on this post. In my opinion, and bear in mind, this is just an opinion, and you will likely get different answers, you should NOT squash the commits when merging into master from the develop branch. Doing so would lose a lot of the history of the changes that have been made.

Should I squash or rebase?

When should I rebase and when should I squash? It does not matter which you use but I recommend rebase. Rebase changes the parent node of the feature branch but merge does not and I recommend it because it keeps the commit structure simpler but as a git user, it makes not different.

How do you master commit squash?

To squash commits, use git rebase -i master in a feature branch.

1. Always pick the oldest commit.
2. Mark all other commits with the word squash.

Does GIT squash delete commits?

Note: squash keeps the git fix commit messages in the description. fixup will forget the commit messages of the fixes and keep the original. As before, all you need to do now is git push –force-with-lease <remote_name> <branch_name> and the changes are up.

Why squash and merge is good?

How is a squash merge helpful? Squash merging keeps your default branch histories clean and easy to follow without demanding any workflow changes on your team. Contributors to the topic branch work how they want in the topic branch, and the default branches keep a linear history through the use of squash merges.

Can you squash commits on GitHub?

Squashing a commit

In GitHub Desktop, click Current Branch. In the list of branches, select the branch that has the commits that you want to squash. Click History. Select the commits to squash and drop them on the commit you want to combine them with.

What is difference between merge and squash commit?

The commit looks like a normal commit on feature . It squashes the commits on main (line 20 and line 14) into one commit and does not have a commit path from main . git merge –squash alters commit history but produces cleaner history. It seems that all development only happens on feature .

Why is rebase better than merge?

Rebasing is better to streamline a complex history, you are able to change the commit history by interactive rebase. You can remove undesired commits, squash two or more commits into one or edit the commit message. Rebase will present conflicts one commit at a time whereas merge will present them all at once.

Is git squash a rebase?

With “squash”, you can merge all of your commits from a feature branch into a single commit, which can then be added to the end of the main branch. In this example, after the 2 feature branches have been rebased and merged in, instead of being 3 commits each, they’re now just 1.