Should you squash your commits?

Asked by: Jessica Tipton

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.

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 I squash before rebasing?

It’s simple – before you merge a feature branch back into your main branch (often master or develop ), your feature branch should be squashed down to a single buildable commit, and then rebased from the up-to-date main branch.

Should you squash commits when merging develop to master?

After you execute git merge develop –squash , the new commit H as if you do a real merge the changes from develop branch into master . And of cause you can merge master into develop and then merge develop branch back into master branch. But it’s not a recommend way.

Why should you merge squash?

Squash merging is a merge option that allows you to condense the Git history of topic branches when you complete a pull request. Instead of each commit on the topic branch being added to the history of the default branch, a squash merge adds all the file changes to a single new commit on the default branch.

How do I undo last commit?

The easiest way to undo the last Git commit is to execute the “git reset” command with the “–soft” option that will preserve changes done to your files. You have to specify the commit to undo which is “HEAD~1” in this case. The last commit will be removed from your Git history.

How do I squash my commits?

Using Interactive Rebase in Tower

In case you are using the Tower Git client, using Interactive Rebase to squash some commits is very simple: just select the commits you want to combine, right-click any of them, and select the “Squash Revisions…” option from the contextual menu.

Should you squash commits before merging?

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.

How do you squash without rebasing?

Option 1: merge –squash

1. Check out a new branch based on master (or the appropriate base branch if your feature branch isn’t based on master ): git checkout -b work master. …
2. Bring in the changes from your messy pull request using git merge –squash : git merge –squash my_feature.

How do I stop git rebasing?

You can run git rebase –abort to completely undo the rebase. Git will return you to your branch’s state as it was before git rebase was called. You can run git rebase –skip to completely skip the commit.

How many commits should be in a pull request?

Have one commit per logical change and one major feature per pull request. When you submit a pull request, all the commits associated with that pull request should be related to the same major feature.

What is a 3 way merge?

A three-way merge is where two changesets to one base file are merged as they are applied, as opposed to applying one, then merging the result with the other. For example, having two changes where a line is added in the same place could be interpreted as two additions, not a change of one line.

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.

How do I clean up commit history?

TLDR. Running git reset –soft <commit-hash> will move the branch to this old commit. And now when you run git status , you will see all the changes you have made since commit-hash in your staging area. You can then create a single commit to update your commit history.

What does dropping a commit do?

(drop) — If you remove a commit from the interactive rebase file, or if you comment it out, the commit will simply disappear as if it had never been checked in. Note that this can cause merge conflicts if any of the later commits in the branch depended on those changes.

Can you squash old commits?

Keep in mind that you need at least one commit to be picked before the one you want to squash in order to be able to do so, which means you can’t choose to squash the first one. Every commit you squash will be squashed into the previous one that was executed.

Can we do multiple commits before pushing?

Committing takes place only within your repository; it has nothing to do with whether or not you’re online. The things that you need to be online for are pushing (publishing your commits to another repository) and pulling (fetching and merging commits from another repository).

How can you temporarily save your local work without committing?

Here is how to save local changes without commit in Git. Just issue git stash command as shown below from your present working directory which contains unsaved unchanges. This will stash all changes you made and your repository will be restored to your last commit.

What is a rebase?

Rebasing is the process of moving or combining a sequence of commits to a new base commit. Rebasing is most useful and easily visualized in the context of a feature branching workflow.

Is rebase better than merge?

For individuals, rebasing makes a lot of sense. If you want to see the history completely same as it happened, you should use merge. Merge preserves history whereas rebase rewrites it . Rebasing is better to streamline a complex history, you are able to change the commit history by interactive rebase.

What to do after rebasing?

Git Rebasing Pushing after a rebase

This can be solved with a git push –force , but consider git push –force-with-lease , indicating that you want the push to fail if the local remote-tracking branch differs from the branch on the remote, e.g., someone else pushed to the remote after the last fetch.