+++
date = "2016-08-17"
title = "Squash git commits when merging"
tags = ["git"]
description = "Got a branch where you tried lots of different things to fix that nagging bug, but want to clean up your git history when merging?"
slug = "squash-git-commits-when-merging"
+++

Today I've been fighting to get our test suite to run against a newly delivered Oracle 
12 database. Of course, that didn't work out of the box, so there was some debugging, 
trial-and-error, and cursing involved. Finally, I managed to get the build back up and running. Yay!

The commit history for this pull request was horrible and some would call it _unprofessional_, 
looking at the various commit messages written in anger. 

Normally I'd [squash all commits together using rebase][squash-rebase] in the feature 
branch and create a nice pull request. In this case I just wanted to merge this to 
`develop` so the build was working. Turns out this is rather easy:

    git checkout develop
    git merge --squash fix_for_oracle_12

This applies all changes from the `fix_for_oracle_12` branch to your working copy, ready
for you to commit in a single commit. 

    git commit -m "Apply workaround for Oracle DB 12"

Done.

[squash-rebase]: https://ariejan.net/2011/07/05/git-squash-your-latests-commits-into-one/