Hi, Git Developers,
Thanks for your help regarding my earlier email (trying to break git
pull --rebase).
I just wanted to warn you all that my first attempt at a patch is
imminent. I'm working on a "git squash" command. Here's a quick
summary:
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git squash [<commit>]
Squashes <commit>..HEAD into a single commit. Replaces HEAD with the
result. If not specified, <commit> defaults to the current branch's
upstream (a.k.a. @{upstream}).
Rationale:
This command provides an intuitive mechanism for in-place squash that
doesn't drop dirty merge results.
We call this an in-place squash because the state of all files and
directories at HEAD does not change. Only the ancestory of HEAD
changes: its (only) parent becomes the merge-base of <commit> and
HEAD, removing all intermediate commits.
Alternatives:
- "git merge --squash master" correctly preserves dirty merge results,
but it's tricky to achieve an in-place squash with this command, since
it requires the following sequence of commands (these assume the
current branch is "feature" and we want to squash it relative to
"master"):
git checkout $(git merge-base HEAD master)
git merge --squash feature
git commit
git branch -f feature
git checkout feature
- "git rebase --interactive HEAD~N" with commits set to "squash" (or
"fixup") is very popular in industry. But it has some tricky edge
cases: drops dirty merge results, can run into conflicts, and can be
confusing if HEAD~N spans any merges (including clean merges).
-----
I expect I'll have the patch finished this weekend, and ready for
everyone to look at by Monday (Feb 26th).
Note: I'm not 100% sure "git rebase --interactive" would drop dirty
merge results (e.g., the dirty parts from conflict-resolving merges).
That's speculation on my part. I'll confirm this before I finish and
submit the patch.
yours sincerely,
Julius Musseau
