2.6Interactive Rebase: Cleaning Up Before a PR

Interactive rebase lets you rewrite, combine, reorder, or drop commits before sharing them.

# Rebase the last 4 commits interactively
git rebase -i HEAD~4

This opens an editor with your commits:

pick abc1234 WIP: start login tests
pick def5678 fix typo
pick ghi9012 WIP: more login tests
pick jkl3456 finish login tests

Change the actions:

pick abc1234 WIP: start login tests
fixup def5678 fix typo                    # Merge into previous, discard message
squash ghi9012 WIP: more login tests      # Merge into previous, combine messages
pick jkl3456 finish login tests

Common actions:

• pick: Keep the commit as-is
• squash: Combine with the previous commit, edit the combined message
• fixup: Combine with the previous commit, discard this commit's message
• reword: Change the commit message
• drop: Remove the commit entirely

When QA engineers should use interactive rebase:

• Combine multiple "WIP" or "fix typo" commits into a single logical commit
• Reword vague commit messages like "fix tests" to something descriptive
• Remove commits that were debugging experiments (e.g., "add console.log")
• Reorder commits so related changes are grouped together