Git: How to squash all commits on branch

Question

I make new branch from master with:

git checkout -b testbranch 

I make 20 commits into it.

Now I want to squash those 20 commits. I do that with:

git rebase -i HEAD~20 

What about if I don't know how many commits? Is there any way to do something like:

git rebase -i all on this branch 

Answer 1

Another way to squash all your commits is to reset the index to master:

git checkout yourBranch git reset $(git merge-base master $(git branch --show-current)) git add -A git commit -m "one commit on yourBranch" 

This isn't perfect as it implies you know from which branch "yourBranch" is coming from.
Note: finding that origin branch isn't easy/possible with Git (the visual way is often the easiest, as seen here).

Note: git branch --show-current has been introduced with Git 2.22 (Q1 20219).

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EDIT: you will need to use git push --force

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Karlotcha Hoa adds in the comments:

For the reset, you can do

git reset $(git merge-base master $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD))  

[That] automatically uses the branch you are currently on.
And if you use that, you can also use an alias, as the command doesn't rely on the branch name.

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sschoof adds in the comments:

Since my default branch is called main and my search had multi times brought me here:
To copy it for my next time

git reset $(git merge-base main $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)) 

Answer 2

Checkout the branch for which you would like to squash all the commits into one commit. Let's say it's called feature_branch.

git checkout feature_branch 

Step 1:

Do a soft reset of your origin/feature_branch with your local main branch (depending on your needs, you can reset with origin/main as well). This will reset all the extra commits in your feature_branch, but without changing any of your file changes locally.

git reset --soft main 

Step 2:

Add all of the changes in your git repo directory, to the new commit that is going to be created. And commit the same with a message.

# Add files for the commit. git add ... git commit -m "commit message goes here"