Squash and reorder commits in Git

You can reorder and squash (merge together) commits in Git using the powerful rebase function.

Rebase

To start a rebase over the last 10 commits, type:

git rebase -i HEAD~10

You will have to edit a file, where you can proceed to multiple changes in the branch history.

To reorder commits, cut the corresponding line (Ctrl-K) and paste it (Ctrl-U) on its new place in history.

To squash commits together, replace the pick prefix with s for all commits that should be squashed with the line above.

When you are satisfied, save (Ctrl-O) and quit (Ctrl-X). For squashes, you will be prompted to confirm or amend commit messages.

Force push to the remote repository

You can check that the history was rearranged as expected with:

git log -10

If you are satisfied, you need to force push the branch to the remote repository. Warning: there is no going back after this point. Once rewritten on your local repository and pushed to remote, you cannot recover the old history.

Assuming you are working on master branch, type:

git push --force origin master

Force pull on another local repository

In case you have other machines with the repository locally, you have to reset it to the new version with:

git fetch
git reset --hard origin/master