Rule of Thumb

Always branch off before doing large rebase

This allows you to hard reset to the original branch when a rebase goes wrong.

Incrementally squash/rebase instead of doing it all at once

Isolate the commits that are troublesome while rebasing.

Rebasing

# start interactive rebasing
git rebase -i HEAD~n

# abort rebasing using Vim error
:cq

# resolve conflict and continue rebasing
git add <file>
git rebase --continue

# Squashing using Interactive Rebase
## first commit always needs to start as `pick`
p
s
s
s
...

# Below example will fold 4 commits into the first commit:

pick a1b2c3d Commit message 1
squash d4e5f6g Commit message 2
squash h7i8j9k Commit message 3
squash l0m1n2o Commit message 4

Cleaning up commit

Always prefer squash over deletion of commit

• IF you accidentally chose HEAD position that includes commit you don't want to squash
  • Simply remove the commit from the list