font force squash commits

[samuelstroschein]

@inlang/contributor @inlang/team yooo I know why we are getting so many merge conflicts lately when rebasing. @ivanhofer#3454 and I decided to only allow squashes of commits to main. We anticipated a "cleaner" commit history.

Problem

1. Squashing commits makes it "impossible" to re-base from main. Git tries to "re-apply" all commits that have been squashed on rebasing = merge conflict on every rebase (I lost multiple hours of work due to these rebase merge conflicts already).
2. Git commit history becomes substantially less valuable when looking at code.

VSCode shows a commit for a single line that consists of 30+ commits = much harder to find the commit and corresponding commit message that describes the change.

Proposal

Don't force squash merges on a PR to avoid merge conflicts and make commit messages useful.

👍 = don't force squash commits anymore
👎 = keep forcing squash commits

[felixhaeberle]

I never understood squash and merge function on github. 😄

But said in the top comment of this post and I agree: Every dev should handle squashes on their own device before pushing a PR.

https://dev.to/wesen/squash-commits-considered-harmful-ob1

[samuelstroschein]

Additional remark: Not squashing commits generally make merge conflicts easier to resolve because (conflicting) commits are smaller.

[ivanhofer]

Problem nr. 1 happens only if you don't branch away from main e.g. when you work on a specific branch and then checkout a new branch from that one.

Problem nr. 2 is not a problem in my opinion. I find it cleaner if I have a commitmessage "added feature X" instead of 20+ commits where half of them says "fix" or "refactor".

[samuelstroschein]

Are you okay if we don't force squash merges?

Problem nr. 1 is a real problem that leads to multiple hours of wasted work if it happens. Problem nr. 2 is opinionated and finding a consensus will be hard. Thus, to minimize the risk of problem 1, don't force squash merges?

[ivanhofer]

Yes, but it will not solve the problem if some people squash and some don't. If the conflicts are too large, a merge commit could be made instead of a rebase.

[samuelstroschein]

I'll close this discussion as "don't force squash commits".

Yes, but it will not solve the problem if some people squash and some don't.

Agree. That's why I wrote minimize and not eliminate. If the situation doesn't improve we can make a follow-up discussion.

[samuelstroschein]

Closing as "don't force squash commits", see #532 (reply in thread)