Re: Graphical tool to merge and reorder commits

[Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2025 at 11:51:42AM +0200, Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
> On 19.08.25 10:35, R. Diez wrote:
> [...]
> > I guess some "git history squash" command would be useful too.
> > 
> > This is what frequently happens to me:
> > - I commit some code changes because the current project builds and tests fine.
> > - I start the "compile all projects" process, which takes about 1 hour.
> > - In the meantime, I commit other unrelated changes.
> > - After an hour, I realise that a silly mistake in the first commit makes compilation fail for some project.
> >    I fix that and I trigger a "compile all projects" again, which takes 1 hour again.
> > - In the meantime, I commit yet another unrelated change.
> > - After yet another hour, the build process notifies me that I made yet another little mistake, and yet another project fails now.
> > 
> > The commit history looks like this:
> > 
> > - A - B - fixA1 - C - fixA2 - D - E
> > 
> > I only do a "git push" when the 1-hour compilation process succeeds. Before the "git push", I want to reorganise that into:
> > 
> > - A+fixA1+fixA2 - B - C - D - E
> > 
> > I know I can work with branches, but branches make everything more complicated. A linear history is easier, especially when you are working alone. Besides, it is not often that I make such silly mistakes. ;-)
> 
> - `git rebase -i HEAD~11` (or so;-)
> - move fixA1 and fixA2 under A and change "pick" to "fixup" for fixA1 and fixA2
> - save and exit the editor
> 
> And done.

It's not really that this isn't doable. It's just not all that obvious
for people who aren't experts, and it's not a straight-forward thing to
do. I think the Git project could certainly use better tooling to make
common workflows obvious and easy.

Anyway, the patch series is out now and can be found at [1].

Patrick

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/20250819-b4-pks-history-builtin-v1-0-9b77c32688fe@pks.im/T/#t