Git Interactive Rebase: Clean Up Your Commit History

# TIL: Git Interactive Rebase: Clean Up Your Commit History

Discovered git rebase -i today and it's a game-changer for cleaning up messy commit history before PR reviews.

The Problem

My commit history looked like this:

fix typo
WIP
fix typo again
actually fixed it
remove console.log

Not exactly professional for a PR review.

The Solution

Interactive rebase lets you edit, squash, and reorder commits:

# Rebase last 5 commits
git rebase -i HEAD~5

Or rebase everything since branching from main git rebase -i main ```

This opens your editor with:

pick 1a2b3c4 fix typo
pick 5d6e7f8 WIP
pick 9g0h1i2 fix typo again
pick 3j4k5l6 actually fixed it
pick 7m8n9o0 remove console.log

Commands: # p, pick = use commit # r, reword = use commit, but edit message # e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending # s, squash = meld into previous commit # f, fixup = like squash, but discard commit message # d, drop = remove commit ```

My Workflow

Change it to:

pick 1a2b3c4 fix typo
fixup 5d6e7f8 WIP
fixup 9g0h1i2 fix typo again
fixup 3j4k5l6 actually fixed it
fixup 7m8n9o0 remove console.log

Result: One clean commit!

Pro Tips

Warning

• *Never rebase commits that have been pushed to a shared branch!** You'll rewrite history and cause conflicts for your team.

Useful Aliases

Add to your ~/.gitconfig:

[alias]
    # Interactive rebase with the given number of latest commits
    rb = "!f() { git rebase -i HEAD~$1; }; f"
    
    # Rebase on main
    rbm = "!git fetch origin main && git rebase -i origin/main"

This has saved me so much embarrassment in code reviews!