Rebase a branch clean

Goal: the branch reads as the sequence of changes you wish you'd made — linear, each commit meaningful, ready to review commit-by-commit.

Before touching anything

• Is the branch shared? If someone else has it checked out or has built on it, don't rewrite without agreeing. A solo feature branch is fair game.
• git fetch and note the base (main).

The passes

1. Fixups first, as you go. When you fix a review comment, commit it as git commit --fixup <sha> (or --squash). Then one git rebase -i --autosquash <base> folds every fixup into its target automatically.
2. Interactive rebase (git rebase -i <base>) for the rest:
   • drop pure noise ("wip", "typo", "revert the revert").
   • squash / fixup commits that only exist to patch an earlier one.
   • reword bad subjects into conventional form.
   • move prefactors and refactors ahead of the feature commit.
3. Rebase onto the base — resolve conflicts as they come (quality/resolve-merge-conflicts), git rebase --continue.
4. Verify — build + tests on the final tip, and ideally spot-check that a mid-branch commit builds (for quality/bisect).
5. Force-push with lease — git push --force-with-lease (never plain --force), so you don't clobber someone else's push.

Rules

• --force-with-lease, not --force.
• Don't rebase main or any long-lived shared branch.
• Merge commits from main into the feature branch → prefer rebasing instead so history stays linear; if the team merges, follow the team.

Anti-patterns

• ❌ Rewriting a branch other people have based work on.
• ❌ git push --force (use --force-with-lease).
• ❌ Squashing everything into one commit when the steps were meaningfully separate.
• ❌ A final tip that passes but broken commits in the middle.