git rebase, squashing all commits: how can conflicts occur?

Question

I have repo with a single branch and numerous commits.

I want to squash all commits into one.

I do:

git rebase --root -i

(see: How to squash all git commits into one? )

after setting all commits to squash (except the first, set to "pick") and exiting the editor, the interactive rebase stops and asks me to solve some conflicts.

I am quite confused about this. I understand conflicts when merging a branch into another. I do not understand it when squashing: should not be the newer commit be automatically considered as the "correct" version of the file? Also, several files have been modified throughout the commits, how come only a very few of them show conflicts?

Answer 1

As hinted by @mnestorov's comment: you probably have merged branches in your history.

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If your intention is to throw away a chunk of history and simply squash commits together, you can do so without using git rebase .

Just run git reset --soft [target commit] , followed by git commit or git commit --amend .

The first one will create a new commit on top of [target commit] , the second will rewrite [target commit] in place.