How to squash my git branch commits into the same branch without rebasing?

Question

I have a local branch, we're using git-flow with Pull Requests and I'm looking to squash a few commits after receiving PR feedback.

How can I squash all my commits (from PR's for example) into the same branch?

I imagine it would be something like:

git checkout master                    # For master
git pull                               # Get all branches up-to-date
git checkout feature1                  # Checkout the branch
git checkout -b feature1_squash        # Make a copy of the branch
git branch -D feature1                 # Delete original branch
git checkout master                    # (?) Branch off latest master for safety
git checkout -b feature1               # Make new (empty) original branch
git merge --squash feature1_squash     # Merge with squash into it
git push -f feature1                   # Push, force will be required

but I'm not sure.
With that many steps it also seems like a good case for using a function to tie it all together and just pass the branch name as a parameter. Of course automating it would mean making sure to handle errors, exceptions, edge cases, etc.

I don't want to use interactive rebase because it's a little tricky to get right for newbies that I train. I also don't want to have to know the number of commits, I just want to do all the ones that exist on this branch.

Answer 1

The answer from VonC is almost there. but knowing that you want to go 3 commits back is tough.

instead you should use merge-base

git reset --soft $(git merge-base YOUR_BRANCH WHERE_YOU_BRANCHED_FROM)
git commit

and edit your message (or use git commit -m instead)

if your on that branch, you can use HEAD and assuming you branched from master your commands would be (using origin/master due to local master being potentially out of date)

git reset --soft $(git merge-base HEAD origin/master)
git commit

If you cant remember where you branched from, the place you are merging the PR back in to is likely correct