Git squash all commits in branch without conflicting

Question

A common development workflow for us is to checkout branch b, commit a bunch to it, then squash all those commits into one (still on b).

However, during the rebase -i process to squash all the commits, there are frequently conflicts at multiple steps.

I essentially want to alter the branch into one commit that represents the state of the repository at the time of the final commit on b

I've done some searching but I haven't found exactly what I'm looking for. I don't want to merge --squash because we would like to test the squashed feature branch before merging.

From that question - I do not want `G` to be in `stable`, I want it to still be on the feature branch. Not sure if i'm missing something — Andy Ray, Jun 27 '13 at 22:36
Cherry pick it on what branch? I would like to keep the same branch name — Andy Ray, Jun 27 '13 at 22:44
Why would there be conflicts when squashing? That doesn't make sense to me... — Ajedi32, Aug 25 '14 at 21:27

score 79 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 23 '15 at 12:21

79

If you don't need the commit information, then you could just do a soft reset. Then files remain as they were and when you commit, this commit will be on top of the commit you did reset to.

To find the commit to reset to:

git merge-base HEAD BRANCH_YOU_BRANCHED_FROM

Then

git reset --soft COMMIT_HASH

Then re-craft the commit, perhaps:

git commit -am 'This is the new re-created one commit'

edited Jun 23 '15 at 12:21

vabada

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answered Jun 27 '13 at 23:20

Rasmus Østergaard Kjær Voss

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Wow thanks a lot for this. Can you please explain why this doesn't work when you do just a "reset" (without --soft)? – timetowonder Mar 23 '20 at 15:29
Default is `--mixed` instead of `--soft`. Mixed will reset the index and HEAD. Soft will only reset the HEAD. Hard reset will reset WorkingDir + Index + HEAD – Melroy van den Berg Mar 26 '22 at 23:54

score 10 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 28 '14 at 22:50

This is simlar to the answer from Rasmus but broken down into three steps that should always work:

$ git merge feature1
$ git reset --soft HEAD@{1}
$ git commit -c feature1

Explanation:

merge and resolve conflicts
keep changes staged but reset to old head
commit all changes using commit message and author from feature branch latest commit

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 01 '20 at 19:44

2

I've created a tool specifically for this task:

https://github.com/sheerun/git-squash

For example you can call following to squash all commits from "master" commit up to HEAD, no matter how many conflicts there would be along the way:

git squash master

It's basically what GitHub does when you "squash and merge" pull request.

answered Jun 01 '20 at 19:44

sheerun

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This is really what I was looking for. Thanks. – Deepak Aug 20 '20 at 08:02

Git squash all commits in branch without conflicting

3 Answers3

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