Posts

Mar 4, 2014
Squashing top commits
Sometimes you find yourself wanting to squash the top commits of a branch down to just one commit. Most of the time this can be accomplished with an interactive rebase:
```
$ git log -n 3 --oneline
474142a Update link to Pro Git in CONTRIBUTING page
3a758a8 Update link to Pro Git in CONTRIBUTING page
b22ae59 update org name in links

$ git rebase -i b22ae59
```
Changing the keyword pick on the second line to fixup, or f for short, will squash the two commits into one.
```
pick 3a758a8 Update link to Pro Git in CONTRIBUTING page
fixup 474142a Update link to Pro Git in CONTRIBUTING page
```
This should result in something like:
```
$ git log -n 2 --oneline
4c3d80a Update link to Pro Git in CONTRIBUTING page
b22ae59 update org name in links
```
Sometimes rebasing directly is not feasible, e.g. when you have a botched merge commit that you have fixed, but later realized you wanted to roll into the same commit. In this scenario you can usually use a combination of reset and commit --amend. Using the same example as above:
```
$ git log -n 3 --oneline
474142a Update link to Pro Git in CONTRIBUTING page
3a758a8 Update link to Pro Git in CONTRIBUTING page
b22ae59 update org name in links

$ git reset --soft 3a758a8
$ git commit --amend -C HEAD
```
reset --soft will rewind the current branch, but leave the index intact so that commit --amend can update the first commit. Adding -C HEAD will reuse its commit message. The end result should be similar:
```
$ puter:spring-framework(master) ms$ git log -n 2 --oneline
46584d3 Update link to Pro Git in CONTRIBUTING page
b22ae59 update org name in links
```

Posts

Squashing top commits