Undo the most recent local commits in Git

Git is an essential tool for software development, allowing developers to track changes, collaborate with others, and manage code versions. One of the critical practices in Git is regularly updating your feature branch with the changes made in the main/develop branch. Doing so minimizes conflicts during code integration and ensures that your code stays up-to-date with the latest changes.

However, it’s not uncommon for developers to forget to rebase their feature branch and end up with multiple conflicts. So, what should you do in such a situation?

Here are the steps to rebase and skip conflict-solving in every conflicting commit:

Step 1: Ensure Your Local Develop Branch is Up-to-Date

Before starting, make sure that your local develop branch is up-to-date with the remote repository’s develop branch by using the following commands:

git checkout develop
git pull

This ensures that you have the latest changes made to the main/develop branch on your local machine.

Step 2: Reset the Feature Branch

Next, you need to reset your feature branch to a single commit, which will make the rebase process simpler. You can use the following command to reset your feature branch:

git checkout feature/newFeature
git reset --soft HEAD~<n>

Here, <n> is the number of commits you want to squash into a single commit. For example, if you want to squash the last 21 commits into a single commit, you can use git reset --soft HEAD~21.

Step 3: Create a New Commit

After resetting the branch, you can now create a new commit that represents all the changes made in the previous commits. You can use the following command to create a new commit:

git commit -m "New feature implementation"

Here, the commit message can be anything that describes the changes made in the feature branch.

Step 4: Rebase the Feature Branch

Now that you have a single commit representing all the changes made in the feature branch, you can rebase it onto the main/develop branch. Use the following command to do this:

git rebase develop

This will apply the changes made in the main/develop branch onto your feature branch.

Step 5: Resolve Conflicts

If there are any conflicts during the rebase process, Git will pause and prompt you to resolve them. However, since you have squashed all the changes into a single commit, you will only need to resolve conflicts once, instead of resolving conflicts in every conflicting commit.

Once you have resolved the conflicts, use the following command to continue the rebase process:

git rebase --continue

Step 6: Push Changes

After completing the rebase process, you can now push your changes to the remote repository. Use the following command to do this:

git push --force

The --force flag is required because you have rewritten the history of your feature branch.

In conclusion, by following these steps, you can rebase your feature branch and squash all the changes into a single commit, which will simplify the rebase process and help you avoid resolving conflicts in every conflicting commit. Remember to regularly update your feature branch with the changes made in the main/develop branch to.