A Less Destructive Approach
4. Rewriting History More Selectively
Sometimes, you don't need to completely erase your entire commit history. Perhaps you just want to modify a few commits or combine some related changes into a single commit. In that case, the git rebase command can be your best friend. Git rebase allows you to selectively rewrite your commit history, giving you more fine-grained control over the process.
With git rebase, you can squash multiple commits into one, edit commit messages, or even drop commits altogether. It's a powerful tool, but it also requires careful attention to detail. If you're not careful, you could end up creating a tangled mess of commits that's even harder to understand than your original history.
To use git rebase, you'll typically start by running git rebase -i <commit>, where <commit> is the commit before the first commit you want to modify. This will open an interactive rebase session in your text editor. In the editor, you can specify the actions you want to perform on each commit, such as "pick" (keep the commit), "reword" (edit the commit message), "squash" (combine the commit with the previous commit), or "drop" (remove the commit).
After you've made your changes in the editor, save the file and close it. Git will then execute the rebase operation, applying your specified actions to each commit. If you encounter any conflicts during the rebase, you'll need to resolve them manually before continuing. Once the rebase is complete, you'll have a modified commit history that hopefully looks much cleaner and more organized.
