Summary

This goal is to reorganize all of your scattered commits into more meaningful commits for easier code reviews. If there are too many layers of changes across too many files at once, it is harder to do a code review. If you can reorganize your chronologically created commits into topical commits, then the code review process is easier (and possibly less bugs slip through the code review process).

This overly-simplified example is not the only strategy for using git to do better code reviews. It is the way I do it, and it’s something to inspire others to consider how to make code reviews and git history easier/better.

This also pedagogically demonstrates the power of rebase in general.

This example assumes you know about interactive rebasing.

Assuming:

• you’re working on a feature branch off of master
• your feature has three main layers: front-end, back-end, DB
• you have made a lot of commits while working on a feature branch. Each commit touches multiple layers at once
• you want (in the end) only three commits in your branch
• one containing all front end changes
• one containing all back end changes
• one containing all DB changes

Strategy:

• we are going to change our chronological commits into “topical” commits.
• first, split all commits into multiple, smaller commits – each containing only one topic at a time (in our example, the topics are front end, back end, DB changes)
• Then reorder our topical commits together and ‘squash’ them into single topical commits

Example:

$ git log --oneline master..
975430b db adding works: db.sql logic.rb
3702650 trying to allow adding todo items: page.html logic.rb
43b075a first draft: page.html and db.sql
$ git rebase -i master

This will be shown in text editor:

pick 43b075a first draft: page.html and db.sql
pick 3702650 trying to allow adding todo items: page.html logic.rb
pick 975430b db adding works: db.sql logic.rb

Change it to this:

e 43b075a first draft: page.html and db.sql
e 3702650 trying to allow adding todo items: page.html logic.rb
e 975430b db adding works: db.sql logic.rb

Then git will apply one commit at a time. After each commit, it will show a prompt, and then you can do the following:

Stopped at 43b075a92a952faf999e76c4e4d7fa0f44576579... first draft: page.html and db.sql
You can amend the commit now, with

        git commit --amend

Once you are satisfied with your changes, run

        git rebase --continue

$ git status
rebase in progress; onto 4975ae9
You are currently editing a commit while rebasing branch 'feature' on '4975ae9'.
  (use "git commit --amend" to amend the current commit)
  (use "git rebase --continue" once you are satisfied with your changes)

nothing to commit, working directory clean
$ git reset HEAD^ #This 'uncommits' all the changes in this commit.
$ git status -s
 M db.sql
 M page.html
$ git add db.sql  #now we will create the smaller topical commits
$ git commit -m "first draft: db.sql"
$ git add page.html
$ git commit -m "first draft: page.html"
$ git rebase --continue

Then you will repeat those steps for every commit. In the end, you have this:

$ git log --oneline
0309336 db adding works: logic.rb
06f81c9 db adding works: db.sql
3264de2 adding todo items: page.html
675a02b adding todo items: logic.rb
272c674 first draft: page.html
08c275d first draft: db.sql

Now we run rebase one more time to reorder and squash:

git rebase -i master

This will be shown in text editor:

pick 08c275d first draft: db.sql
pick 272c674 first draft: page.html
pick 675a02b adding todo items: logic.rb
pick 3264de2 adding todo items: page.html
pick 06f81c9 db adding works: db.sql
pick 0309336 db adding works: logic.rb

Change it to this:

pick 08c275d first draft: db.sql
s 06f81c9 db adding works: db.sql
pick 675a02b adding todo items: logic.rb
s 0309336 db adding works: logic.rb
pick 272c674 first draft: page.html
s  3264de2 adding todo items: page.html

NOTICE: make sure that you tell git rebase to apply/squash the smaller topical commits in the order they were chronologically commited. Otherwise you might have false, needless merge conflicts to deal with.

When that interactive rebase is all said and done, you get this:

$ git log --oneline master..
74bdd5f adding todos: GUI layer
e8d8f7e adding todos: business logic layer
121c578 adding todos: DB layer

Recap

You have now rebased your chronological commits into topical commits. In real life, you may not need to do this every single time, but when you do want or need to do this, now you can. Plus, hopefully you learned more about git rebase.