Merge commits don't appear in git rebase --interactive

Question

Rebase doesn't normally preserve merge commits without --preserve-merges

Ok, so I'm not exactly sure what would happen if you tried to squash a merge commit using an interactive rebase with --preserve-merges...but this is how I would remove the merge commit in your case and make your history linear:

1. Rebase everything before the merge commit on top of the remote branch.

2. Cherry-pick or rebase everything after the merge commit on top of the previously rebased commits.

If you only have 1 commit after the merge commit

So in terms of commands, that would look something like this:

# Reset to commit before merge commit
git reset --hard <merge>^

# Rebase onto the remote branch
git rebase <remote>/<branch>

# Cherry-pick the last commit
git cherry-pick 1abcd 

If you have more than 1 commit after the merge commit

# Leave a temporary branch at your current commit
git branch temp

# Reset to commit before merge commit
git reset --hard <merge>^

# Rebase onto the remote branch
git rebase <remote>/<branch>

# Cherry-pick the last commits using a commit range.
# The start of the range is exclusive (not included)
git cherry-pick <merge>..temp

# Alternatively to the cherry-pick above, you can instead rebase everything
# from the merge commit to the tip of the temp branch onto the other
# newly rebased commits.
#
# You can also use --preserve-merges to preserve merge commits following
# the first merge commit that you want to get rid of...but if there were
# any conflicts in those merge commits, you'll need to re-resolve them again.
git rebase --preserve-merges --onto <currentBranch> <merge> temp

# These next steps are only necessary if you did the rebase above,
# instead of using the cherry-pick range.
#
# Fast-forward your previous branch and delete temp
git checkout <previousBranch>
git merge temp
git branch -d temp

Documentation

• Official Linux Kernel git-cherry-pick(1) Manual Page

• Official Linux Kernel git-rebase(1) Manual Page

Git offers a new way using --rebase-merges :

Before --rebase-merges I get 6 conflicts with my specific case.

git rebase -i --rebase-merges origin/master

And you may see something like :

label onto

reset 4127388 # Formatting
pick 87da5b5 feat: add something
pick 8fcdff4 feat: add ..
merge -C 80784fe onto # Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into a-branch-name
pick 3d9fec7 add unit tests