fork-point and squash

[levinotik]

The help for some of the commands is sometimes a bit difficult to grasp so I'm having some trouble understanding fork-point and how it interacts with squash.

In a young repo, I wanted to squash all of my commits. git machete squash outputs:

Fork point not found for branch master; use git machete fork-point master --override-to...

(not sure if that's being ellipsized due to my shell or if that's the full output)

Maybe I'm missing something, butfork-point --help didn't seem to provide enough info for me to know what exactly I need to do to be able to squash. I'm sure I'm just missing a basic concept here.

So, in this case — newish repo, one master branch, and 20 commits, how can I simply squash everything down to the first commit?

Is the main concept here that since squash will squash the unique history of the branch, if there is no other branch machete doesn't know which commit to consider the divergence point in order to select the correct set of commits?

Appreciate any guidance and explanation!

[PawelLipski]

👋🏻

Hey there... is master a root branch (i.e. a branch that does not have any parent in .git/machete)? It's likely that it's the same UX problem as in #930 🤔 I'll fix that soon 🔧

Anyway, you can try git machete squash --fork-point=HEAD~20 for now!

[levinotik]

Thanks for the help. That's correct .git/machete is just master:

❯ cat .git/machete
master

I think I did basically what you had suggested, but with git machete fork-point --override-to=30bae04 where 30bae04 was either the first or second commit (can't remember).

Thank you for the reply! Still trying to wrap my head around machete.

[PawelLipski]

Also...

I wanted to squash all of my commits

but then

git machete fork-point --override-to=30bae04 where 30bae04 was either the first or second commit

I suppose you haven't managed to squash all commits eventually, right? only all but one or all but two, right? 🤔 I've realized there's indeed no support for squashing all commits (as it's impossible to specify the virtual "zeroth" commit as fork point via commit hash)

[PawelLipski]

Is the main concept here that since squash will squash the unique history of the branch, if there is no other branch machete doesn't know which commit to consider the divergence point in order to select the correct set of commits?

And yes, indeed, that's the concept :)