When I try to interactively rebase (squash) several commits into one, it only ever squashes the last two commits so I end up having to do the squash several times.
I am using source tree, but I have tried doing it from the console with the same results. Any ideas?
Try -
$ git rebase -i HEAD~4
then
pick 01d1124 commit msg 1
squash 6340aaa commit msg 2
squash ebfd367 commit msg 3
squash 30e0ccb commit msg 4
save and quit your editor
You can do the same in Sourcetree -
(Interactive) rebasing technically squashes only two commits at a time—simply because the so-called "rebase script" you're typically asked to edit before git rebase proceeds applies an action to a single commit at a time.
This does not, however, change the outcome because logically there's no difference between squashing N commits at once or doing this commit-by-commit.
In your rebase script, you just pick the action "squash" (also read up on "fixup"—it's often may be more handy than "squash") for a series of adjacent commits, and then git rebase works like this:
git apply).Note that there's also the --squash command-line option of git merge.
This one squashes several commits at once for real.
Given that your branch points to the last of the commits you want to squash you can use this trick:
git reset --soft <some older commit>
git commit --amend
You have now replaced <some older commit> with a new one containing everything between the two, plus their content.
This is exactly what interactive rebase is for.
You use the git rebase -i @~x where x stand for the number of commits you wish to squash.
Then a dialog will open up for you and you can choose commits and what you wish to do with each commit.
