在GitHub上提交PR时如何清除提交历史记录？

Question

I'm new to Git. On GitHub, I forked a third-party project to make contributions to. Every time new PRs are merged to its master, I have to update my fork to stay current. On the home page of my forked repository, I click New pull request , swap base and head forks, create a new PR, and merge it to my own copy.

However, I noticed this is creating an increasingly large list of commits in the commit history every time I submit a PR. How do I consolidate all those commits into one before or after I submit a PR? I'm using Visual Studio 2015.

I think I need to squash commits, but I don't know how to do that on VS.

Answer 1

You shouldn't squash or use pull requests, instead add the remote for the original repo to your project and then you can rebase on top of their latest code.

 git remote add theirs https://www.github.com/original/project.git
 git fetch theirs

Now in Visual Studio (or from the command line) you can right click the theirs/master branch and select rebase onto . This will rewrite your local history and will replay your changes on top of their latest code.

It may be required to force push to your own github fork, because rebasing causes your local git commit-ids to change in some cases. You may have to merge changes as the rebase takes place, since their latest version will be leading and your local commits will be replayed on top of the latest version of their code.

This process will give you the cleanest history that will include their latest changes.

If the rebase/force-push daunts you, it's also possible to do a normal merge from theirs/master into your local branch. Make sure to fetch the latest changes from theirs after adding the remote and then you can right click their master branch in Visual Studio and select "Merge into" to merge their changes into your local working directory.