Combining Multiple Commits Into One Prior To Push

Question

For your first question, no, there's nothing wrong with pushing multiple commits at once. Many times, you may want to break your work down into a few small, logical commits, but only push them up once you feel like the whole series is ready. Or you might be making several commits locally while disconnected, and you push them all once you're connected again. There's no reason to limit yourself to one commit per push.

I generally find that it's a good idea to keep each commit a single, logical, coherent change, that includes everything it needs to work (so, it does not leave your code in a broken state). If you have a two commits, but they would cause the code to be broken if you only applied the first one, it might be a good idea to squash the second commit into the first. But if you have two commits where each one makes a reasonable change, pushing them as separate commits is fine.

If you do want to squash several commits together, you can use git rebase -i. If you're on branch topical_xFeature, you would run git rebase -i master. This will open an editor window, with a bunch of commits listed prefixed by pick. You can change all but the first to squash, which will tell Git to keep all of those changes, but squash them into the first commit. After you've done that, check out master and merge in your feature branch:

git checkout topical_xFeature
git rebase -i master
git checkout master
git merge topical_xFeature

Alternatively, if you just want to squash everything in topical_xFeature into master, you could just do the following:

git checkout master
git merge --squash topical_xFeature
git commit

Which one you choose is up to you. Generally, I wouldn't worry about having multiple smaller commits, but sometimes you don't want to bother with extra minor commits, so you just squash them into one.

This is the way I generally follow to combine multiple Commits into a single commit before I push the code.

To achieve this, I suggest you use 'squash' concept provided by GIT.

Follow the below steps.

1) git rebase -i master (instead of master you can also use a specific commit)

open the rebase interactive editor, where it will show all your commits. Basically where you need to identify the commits which you want to merge into a single commit.

Imagine these are your commits and shown something like this in the editor.

pick f7f3f6d changed my name a bit    
pick 310154e updated README formatting and added blame   
pick a5f4a0d added cat-file  

It's important to note that these commits are listed in the opposite order than you normally see them using the log command. Means, the older commit will be shown first.

2) Change 'pick' to 'squash' for last committed changes. something like shown below. Doing that so, your last 2 commits will be merged with the first one.

pick f7f3f6d changed my name a bit         
squash 310154e updated README formatting and added blame   
squash a5f4a0d added cat-file

You can also use short form if you have lot of commits to combine:

p f7f3f6d changed my name a bit         
s 310154e updated README formatting and added blame   
s a5f4a0d added cat-file

for editing use 'i', it will enable the editor for insertion. Keep in mind top most(oldest) commit cannot be squashed as there is no previous commit to combine with. So it has to be picked or 'p'. Use 'Esc' to exit insert mode.

3) Now, save the editor with the following command. :wq

When you save that, you have a single commit that introduces the changes of all three previous commits.

Hope this will help you.

First: nothing tells you to only have one commit per branch per push: a push is a publication mechanism allowing you to publish a local history (i.e. a collection of commits) on a remote repo.

Second: a git merge --no-ff topical_xFeature would record on master as a single commit your topic work, before pushing master.
(That way, you keep topical_xFeature around for further evolutions, that you can record on master as a single new commit on the next merge --no-ff.
If getting rid of topical_xFeature is the goal, then git merge --squash is the right option, as detailed in Brian Campbell's answer.)

Switch to the master branch and make sure you are up to date.

git checkout master

git fetch this may be necessary (depending on your git config) to receive updates on origin/master

git pull

Merge the feature branch into the master branch.

git merge feature_branch

Reset the master branch to origin's state.

git reset origin/master

Git now considers all changes as unstaged changes. We can add these changes as one commit. Adding . will also add untracked files.

git add --all

git commit

Ref: https://makandracards.com/makandra/527-squash-several-git-commits-into-a-single-commit

1. First choose which commit you want everything to come after.

   git reflog
   5976f2b HEAD@{0}: commit: Fix conflicts
   80e85a1 HEAD@{1}: commit: Add feature
   b860ddb HEAD@{2}: commit: Add something
   

2. Reset to your selected head (I have chosen HEAD@{2})

   git reset b860ddb --soft
   

3. git status (just to be sure)

4. Add your new commit

   git commit -m "Add new commit"
   

Note: HEAD@{0} & HEAD@{1} Are now merged into 1 commit, this can be done for multiple commits also.

git reflog again should display:

git reflog
5976f2b HEAD@{0}: commit: Add new commit
b860ddb HEAD@{1}: commit: Add something