How to rewrite history with git rebase

Interactive rebase lets you edit a series of commits before sharing them. Golden rule: only rewrite commits you have not pushed to a shared branch.

Start an interactive rebase

To edit the last 4 commits:

git rebase -i HEAD~4

Git opens an editor listing commits, oldest first:

pick a1b2c3 add parser skeleton
pick d4e5f6 fix typo
pick 987654 implement tokenizer
pick fedcba tests for tokenizer

Change pick to:

Command	Effect
`pick`	keep commit as-is
`reword`	keep changes, edit message
`squash` / `s`	merge into previous commit, combine messages
`fixup`	merge into previous, discard message
`drop`	delete the commit
`edit`	pause here to amend manually

Typical cleanup — squash the typo fix into the parser commit:

pick a1b2c3 add parser skeleton
fixup d4e5f6 fix typo
pick 987654 implement tokenizer
squash fedcba tests for tokenizer

Save and close; Git replays the commits.

Use edit to stop at a commit, make changes, then continue:

# ...make edits...
git add -p
git commit --amend
git rebase --continue

Rebase applies commits one at a time. On conflict:

# resolve files, then
git add <file>
git rebase --continue
# or bail out entirely:
git rebase --abort

If you must push rewritten commits to your own PR branch:

git push --force-with-lease

--force-with-lease refuses to overwrite work someone else pushed since your last fetch — always prefer it over --force.