GIT SQUASH COMMITS HOW TO

Now on an important note, you should not squash commits if they're pushed to the main branch of the repository. That way you can combine all your patch commits into a single commit, or squash formatting and spelling error commits into other commits, leaving behind a git history of only necessary commits. Squashing allows to combine or 'squash' the commits together, leaving a nice git history behind.

This is where squashing the commits would come handy. Or along an ongoing discussion in a PR, you have made some patch commits and now before merging the PR you want to combine them, as old patches don't really make sense. More realistically, imagine you're working on a PR, and as you're pushing the commits, and they're getting reviewed you accidentally mess up formatting and commit. Only to realize later that you have made a spelling error 🥲🤦 Now you can use a soft reset, fix the error, and re-commit, leaving no one any wiser, but what if you had already pushed the commit in PR? So imagine this, you have written your beautiful code, written comments in a well known format, the code is compiling and working, and you satisfyingly make a commit with the perfect commit message. Why would you ever want to squash something?

GIT SQUASH COMMITS HOW TO

Of course, working on projects is a side effect, you know why we really do it.😏😏 To plant a tree, obviously 🌳🌲🌳🌲 (Seriously, we should do that seeing the amount of wildfires this year)Īnyway, while making PRs, you might be asked to squash formatting or spelling error commits, and to save you a Google search, I am writing this post to show you why, when and how to squash commits in your PR.

Git illustration in text created by MilanĪs you might be aware, hacktoberfest is approaching, and in about a month many of you will be helping out on open source projects.

Git squash commits