Interactive Rebase

Guide through interactive rebase with explanations

Guide through interactive rebase to clean up commit history.

Instructions

1. Start interactive rebase for the last N commits:

git rebase -i HEAD~5       # last 5 commits
# or
git rebase -i main         # all commits since branching from main

2. Explain rebase actions:

pick   — keep the commit as-is
reword — keep the commit but change its message
edit   — stop and let you amend the commit
squash — combine with previous commit, merge messages
fixup  — combine with previous commit, discard this message
drop   — remove the commit entirely

3. Common rebase recipes:

Squash all branch commits into one: Change all but first pick to squash (or fixup)

Reorder commits: Just move lines up/down in the editor

Split a commit: Change to edit, then:

git reset HEAD~1
git add file1 && git commit -m "part 1"
git add file2 && git commit -m "part 2"
git rebase --continue

4. If things go wrong:

git rebase --abort    # cancel and go back to original state

Rules

• Never rebase commits that are already pushed to a shared branch
• If rebasing a pushed branch, you'll need git push --force-with-lease (safer than --force)