Squash my last X commits together using Git

Question

How can I squash my last X commits together into one commit using Git?

Answer 1

I find a more generic solution is not to specify 'N' commits, but rather the branch/commit-id you want to squash on top of. This is less error-prone than counting the commits up to a specific commit—just specify the tag directly, or if you really want to count you can specify HEAD~N.

In my workflow, I start a branch, and my first commit on that branch summarizes the goal (i.e. it's usually what I will push as the 'final' message for the feature to the public repository.) So when I'm done, all I want to do is git squash master back to the first message and then I'm ready to push.

I use the alias:

squash = !EDITOR="\"_() { sed -n 's/^pick //p' \"\\$1\"; sed -i .tmp '2,\\$s/^pick/f/' \"\\$1\"; }; _\"" git rebase -i

This will dump the history being squashed before it does so—this gives you a chance to recover by grabbing an old commit ID off the console if you want to revert. (Solaris users note it uses the GNU sed -i option, Mac and Linux users should be fine with this.)