Squash Commits via the git rebase Command

Add files and commits

In the terminal provided at the end of the lesson, we add some files and make changes to them. We create two files, file1.txt and file2.txt. Two branches, main and feature_a, are also created. We add four lines to file2.txt, one after the other. We have already run these commands in the terminal at the end of the lesson.

$ git checkout -b main
$ touch file1.txt
$ git add file1.txt
$ git commit -m "creation of file1"
$ git checkout -b feature_a
$ touch file2.txt
$ git add file2.txt
$ git commit -m "creation of file2"
$ echo "line 1" >>  file2.txt
$ git add file2.txt
$ git commit -m "line 1 file 2"
$ echo "line 2" >>  file2.txt
$ git add file2.txt
$ git commit -m "line 2 file 2"
$ echo "line 3" >>  file2.txt
$ git add file2.txt
$ git commit -m "line 3 file 2"
$ git status

Now, run this command in the terminal below:

$ git log --oneline --graph --decorate --all

When we run the git log command, we see the commit history of the creation of files and changes in it:

* cbae73c (HEAD -> feature_a) line 3 file 2
* 3cc7357 line 2 file 2
* 8c92700 line 1 file 2
* 1f8f7c1 creation of file2
* 86f6ad0 (main) creation of file1

Use git rebase interactively

We can modify the history of commits by using interactive git rebase, which is git rebase -i main.

Run the git rebase -i main command. We see the default editor opens with the content below.

This is a critical step. The commits that are rearranged are listed in the file. By default, they have pick status. We can choose how these commits are rearranged during the rebase, including changing the commit messages or even deleting the commits.

$ git rebase -i main