Squash commits directly on feature without rebase or merge

Question

I've been reading a little about --squashing commits, but they all seem to be go hand in hand with a --rebase.

I have a feature branch with a set of commits like this:

(Feature)          A --> B --> C --> D --> E --> F --> G
                  /
(Master)  M1 --> M2 --> M3

Suppose I want to merge back to the Master branch, but I want to clean up the commits on my feature first.

Is it possible to:

Pick commit B, E and F and squash them together as one commit?

OR

Can I only squash the commits that come in order, so squash: (A, B and C), or squash (D, E and F) etc?

Either way, can I do a squash directly on my feature, WITHOUT immidiately initializing a Merge or Rebase with it?

If so, how can I do this with Git?

score 20 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 07 '17 at 16:40

20

In my team's workflow we often merge with upstream in the middle of a bunch of commits, and rebasing could get ugly. I've found this helpful to squash all commits that are ahead of master down into one:

# Commit any working changes on branch "mybranchname", then...
git checkout master
git checkout -b mybranchname_temp
git merge --squash mybranchname
git commit -am "Message describing all squashed commits"
git branch -m mybranchname mybranchname_unsquashed
git branch -m mybranchname

# Optional cleanup:
git branch -D mybranchname_unsquashed

# If squashing already-pushed commits...
git push -f

answered Sep 07 '17 at 16:40

BoltzmannBrain

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Maybe you should cite this https://gist.github.com/n00neimp0rtant/9515611 – user.friendly Mar 11 '20 at 04:36
Before doing the above merge master into your feature branch – SAM May 04 '21 at 12:10

danday74 · Answer 2 · 2023-05-11T15:55:01.703

This works if the commits are local and have not been pushed yet:

git reset --soft HEAD~x
git commit -m "whatever"

Where x is the number of commits you want to squash

Not sure how this would work if the commits you want to squash are on the remote also - if that was the case you "might" need to:

git push -f

after running the above commands. The usual warnings of git push -f apply - if there is a need to force push make sure you do sanity checks with git log first (as a force push overwrites the code on the remote)!

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 14 '15 at 15:10

5

Yes and no.

Yes, you can avoid changing the parent of commit 'A' but I believe you can't avoid git rebase. You can do interactive rebase on the same root:

git rebase -i M2 Feature

Then you can do whatever you want and at the end branch Feature will still start from commit M2.

answered Jul 14 '15 at 15:10

Kirill

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This is what I came here for. A way to squash only certain commits within the feature branch, without involving master. Thank you! – Justin Eyster Jun 24 '20 at 16:48
Btw if there are any doubts about what is a M2 (base feature branch commit) in your particular case, `git merge-base ` might be helpful. – Gleb Apr 27 '23 at 18:09

avivamg · Answer 4 · 2020-02-02T16:17:12.757

Solution: It is possible to squash multiple commits into single one without rebasing. The best option is to create a new temporary branch from master, then merge the messy branch squashed in only single commit into the temporary branch, then making a pointer to it in your working branch and after delete the temporary one.

Lets assume:

master is your master branch,
feature is your messy working branch
temp is your temporary branch

How to do it?

git checkout -b <temp> <master>
git merge --squash <feature>
git commit -m "your single message"
git checkout <feature>
git reset --hard <temp>
git push -f
git branch -D <temp>

Before:

(Feature)          A --> B --> C --> D --> E --> F --> G
                  /
(Master)  M1 --> M2 --> M3

After:

                           AG --> 
                          /
(Master)  M1 --> M2 --> M3

Squash commits directly on feature without rebase or merge

4 Answers4