Git History Polish

Your local history is your "draft." Before you push to a shared repository, you should polish it into a clean, narrative-driven sequence of commits.

Tools

• Interactive Rebase: git rebase -i <base> allows you to rewrite your local history.
• Squash: Combine multiple small "wip" commits into a single atomic change.
• Fixup: Like squash, but discards the log message of the combined commit. Perfect for fixing typos or small errors found after a commit.
• Rewording: Edit the message of an old commit.

The Rule of Public History

NEVER rewrite history that has already been pushed to a shared branch. Rebase/Squash only what is local or on a private feature branch.

Value

A clean history makes it easy for future maintainers (including yourself) to understand why changes were made without wading through "WIP" noise.