A customer wanted to know which of the git tricks I’ve shared still work if you use a squash instead of a true merge. For example, in the case of splitting a file in two while preserving line history<\/a>, can this be done with squashing?<\/p>\n Many of the git tricks exploit the way git walks the commit graph, and squashing creates a different graph from merging. Specifically, squashing throws away all our hard work<\/i> in building a specific commit graph. Instead, squashing takes all the changes and squashes them together into a single commit. It’s as if you made all the changes at one sitting and committed them as a unit.<\/p>\n On the other hand, squashing works just fine with the tricks that involve a single non-merge commit. It just replaces one non-merge commit with an identical one.<\/p>\n
| Trick<\/th>\n | Squashable?<\/th>\n | Notes<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n |
|---|---|---|
| Merging instead of cherry-picking<\/a><\/td>\n | No<\/td>\n | Merging is the point<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Building a commit manually out of a tree<\/a><\/td>\n | Yes<\/td>\n | Creates a single non-merge commit<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Building a merge commit manually out of a tree<\/a><\/td>\n | No<\/td>\n | Result is a merge commit<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Building a throwaway commit in order to perform a combined cherry-pick-squash<\/a><\/td>\n | Yes<\/td>\n | Creates a single non-merge commit<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Changing a squash to a merge<\/a><\/td>\n | No<\/td>\n | Result is a merge commit (that’s the whole point)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Squashing without git rebase<\/a><\/td>\n | Yes<\/td>\n | Creates a single non-merge commit<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Resetting by reusing an earlier tree<\/a><\/td>\n | No<\/td>\n | Result is a commit that needs to be merged<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Combining two files into one while preserving line history<\/a><\/td>\n | No<\/td>\n | Creates merge commits<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Combining two files into one while preserving line history, via manual octopus merging<\/a><\/td>\n | No<\/td>\n | Creates merge commits<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| How do I split a file into two while preserving git line history?<\/a><\/td>\n | No<\/td>\n | Creates merge commits<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| How to split out pieces of a file while preserving git line history v1<\/a><\/td>\n | No<\/td>\n | Creates merge commits<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| How to split out pieces of a file while preserving git line history v2<\/a><\/td>\n | No<\/td>\n | Creates merge commits<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| How to duplicate a file while preserving git line history<\/a><\/td>\n | No<\/td>\n | Creates merge commits<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Converting a rebase to a merge<\/a><\/td>\n | No<\/td>\n | Creates merge commits<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| How can I bulk-revert an entire repo to an earlier commit?<\/a><\/td>\n | It depends<\/td>\n | Method 1 uses a single non-merge commit, but method 2 uses a merge<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| How can I bulk-revert a subdirectory of a repo to an earlier commit?<\/a><\/td>\n | Yes<\/td>\n | Creates a single non-merge commit<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In many cases, the merge is where the magic is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":100998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-105406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":" In many cases, the merge is where the magic is.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |