Interactive rebase (git rebase -i) - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Interactive Rebase with git rebase -i

📖 Scenario: You are working on a small project with a few commits. You want to clean up your commit history before sharing your work with your team. This means combining some commits and editing commit messages to make the history clearer.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to use git rebase -i to interactively edit, squash, and reorder commits in your local git repository.

📋 What You'll Learn

Have git installed and a local git repository initialized

Have at least 3 commits in your current branch

Use git rebase -i to modify commit history

Understand basic git commands like git log and git commit

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Cleaning up commit history before sharing code helps keep project history clear and understandable for everyone.

💼 Career

Using interactive rebase is a common skill for developers and DevOps engineers to maintain clean and professional git histories.

1

Create initial commits

Create three commits in your git repository with these exact commit messages in order: "Add README", "Add LICENSE", and "Update README". Use git commit with the -m option to set the messages.

Git

# Create three commits with messages "Add README", "Add LICENSE", and "Update README"
# Your git commands here

Need a hint?

Use git commit --allow-empty -m "message" to create commits without changing files.

2

Start interactive rebase

Run git rebase -i HEAD~3 to start an interactive rebase for the last three commits.

Git

git commit --allow-empty -m "Add README"
git commit --allow-empty -m "Add LICENSE"
git commit --allow-empty -m "Update README"
# Run interactive rebase for last 3 commits
# Your command here

Need a hint?

The command git rebase -i HEAD~3 opens the last 3 commits for editing.

3

Edit the rebase todo list

In the opened editor, change the second commit's action from pick to squash to combine it with the first commit. Leave the others as pick. Save and close the editor to continue.

Git

git commit --allow-empty -m "Add README"
git commit --allow-empty -m "Add LICENSE"
git commit --allow-empty -m "Update README"
git rebase -i HEAD~3
# Change 'pick' to 'squash' for the second commit in the editor
# Save and close the editor

Need a hint?

Change only the second commit's action from pick to squash in the editor that opens after running git rebase -i.

4

View the updated commit history

Run git log --oneline -3 to display the last three commits and verify that the second commit was squashed into the first.

Git

git commit --allow-empty -m "Add README"
git commit --allow-empty -m "Add LICENSE"
git commit --allow-empty -m "Update README"
git rebase -i HEAD~3
# In editor:
# pick  Add README
# squash  Add LICENSE
# pick  Update README
# Save and close editor
# Run git log to check commits
# Your command here

Need a hint?

The output of git log --oneline -3 should show two commits with messages including "Add README" and "Update README" after squashing.