How to restore linear git history after nonlinear merge?

Question

Few commits ago I accidentally did a nonlinear merge in my master branch. I have a habit of always trying to keep a linear history, so now I would like to restore the linearity.

Answer 1

Perhaps the simplest way this can be done is to "abuse" the default behavior of git rebase. That is, without explicitly passing --rebase-merges to git rebase, it will actually remove all merge commits from the history. This allows us to get the desired result extremely easily:

Before:

~/merge-question (master) $ git log --oneline --graph --date-order
* 88a4b7e (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD) 11
* 5aae63c 10
*   5506f33 Merge branch 'other'
|\
| * b9c56c9 9
* | 3c72a2a 8
| * 8d2c1ea 7
| * 35f124b 6
* | 7ca5bc1 5
* | b9e9776 4
| * fd83f02 3
|/
* 4fa8b2e 2
* cbdcf50 1

Running the command:

~/merge-question (master) $ git rebase 3c72a2a
First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...
Applying: 3
Applying: 6
Applying: 7
Applying: 9
Applying: 10
Applying: 11

After:

~/merge-question (master) $ git log --oneline --graph --date-order
* d72160d (HEAD -> master) 11
* 90a4718 10
* 3c773db 9
* ba00ecf 7
* 9e48199 6
* 24376c7 3
* 3c72a2a 8
* 7ca5bc1 5
* b9e9776 4
* 4fa8b2e 2
* cbdcf50 1

After this, just a simple git push -f origin master and the remote's history is back to linear.