How to squash multiple commits in history into one? [duplicate]

Question

I have a branch "master" which has 5 commits:

A --> B --> C --> D --> E (master)

Now I want to merge the intermediate commits B, C, and D into one because their changes are trivial. I wish the result after merging is:

A --> B' --> E (master)

I tried the command git rebase -i A D and it results in a detached head that is not in the master branch. But I want to stay in the master branch, how can I do that?

Answer 1

You use:

git rebase -i A

which will open a list of commands in a text editor for you, like this:

pick A Message of A
pick B Message of B
pick C Message of C
pick D Message of D
pick E Message of E

# instructional comments
# ...

In that, you'll change the texts in front of C and D to be squash (or just s), and you'll save and close the file. Then you'll be prompted to form the new commit message for B', and after you save and close that text editor, you'll be back on master with your now rewritten commits.