I had a feature branch:
feature
with lets say 10 commits
then some time ago I started doing experiments on it, but wanted to preserve the current functionality just in case, so I started a new branch:
feature-experiment
and then did another 10 commits
today I decided to merge feature-experiment into feature and then I deleted feature-experiment. There were some merge conflicts which I resolved.
then, my 20 commits which were all using the same name and ending in WIP (work in progress), were very ugly, so I decided to
git rebase -p -i HEAD~22
I changed pick to s to squash them all into the oldest commit for this feature, but I had some merge conflicts (the same as before). I resolved them and then
git add -A && git commit
git rebase --continue
but now I get the following error:
error: Commit asd123qsd is a merge but no -m option was given.
fatal: cherry-pick failed
Could not pick asd123qsd
This is the last commit (the merge one)
I tried again, but this time I didnt change this particular commit's pick to s, but got the same error.
How can I carry out this dreadful rebase?
I was thinking, as a possible solution, I could I modify the last commit to add -m to it, but how do I do that and what do I do with this -m command? Are there any other options
The problem is likely here:
git rebase -p -i HEAD~22
The -p option is described in the git documentation as the short version of --preserve-merges:
-p
--preserve-merges
Recreate merge commits instead of flattening the history by replaying commits a merge commit introduces. Merge conflict resolutions or manual amendments to merge commits are not preserved.
This uses the --interactive machinery internally, but combining it with the --interactive option explicitly is generally not a good idea unless you know what you are doing (see BUGS below).
Since you're trying to squash commits here, preserving merge commits is almost certainly not what you want. Additionally, the warning about combining the --preserve-merges flag with the --interactive (-i) flag is likely relevant here.
Honestly though, using a rebase to do a squash like this may be introducing a lot more complexity than what you need here. If all you want is to squash all of the changes from this branch into a single commit, you can do that like this:
git checkout feature
git reset --soft <base of feature branch>
At this point all the changes from your feature branch should be staged, and the feature branch should be at the base commit. Now you can simply run git commit to create a new commit containing all the changes from your feature branch, which is basically equivalent to a squash.