Squash branch

Collapse all of a branch's commits into one, authored by the committer, with a clean message and no co-author trailers. Interactive rebase (git rebase -i) is not available in this environment, so the squash uses git reset --soft against the base, which produces the identical end state.

When to use

Use when a feature branch has several work-in-progress commits that should land as one commit.

Do NOT use on a shared branch others have based work on (rewriting its history breaks their clones), and do NOT run any git command here without explicit user request, per the repo git policy.

Files that change

None. This operates on git history, not the working tree. The tree at HEAD is byte-for-byte identical before and after; only the commit history collapses.

Procedure

1. Confirm the base and that the branch is ahead of it with nothing behind: git rev-list --count <base>..HEAD (commits to squash) and git rev-list --count HEAD..<base> (must be 0; rebase onto <base> first if not).
2. Record the current tree to verify the squash later: git rev-parse HEAD^{tree}.
3. Collapse to staged changes without moving the working tree: git reset --soft <base>.
4. Stage any intended uncommitted additions with git add, leaving unrelated working-tree changes out.
5. Commit once with a clean message and no co-author or generated-by trailers: git commit. The commit is authored by the configured git identity.
6. Verify nothing changed: git rev-parse HEAD^{tree} must equal the value from step 2, and git log --oneline <base>..HEAD must show exactly one commit.

Gates

• The post-squash tree hash must equal the pre-squash tree hash (step 6); a mismatch means content was dropped or added, not just recommitted.
• git log --oneline <base>..HEAD shows a single commit.

Pitfalls

• git reset --soft leaves the index and working tree untouched, so uncommitted or untracked files are still present after it; stage deliberately in step 4 so unrelated changes do not get folded into the squash.
• Squashing rewrites history, so a branch already pushed needs a force push (--force-with-lease), which is an outward-facing action the user must approve.
• Writing a fresh commit message drops any co-author or generated-by trailers from the original commits, which is the intended cleanup; do not carry them forward.