unable use rebase command

Question

I am trying to squash the git commits with following command

$ git rebase -i HEAD~3

But after running above command I am facing following error:

fatal: invalid upstream 'HEAD~3'

What is the output of git log --decorate --oneline --graph? (See also stackoverflow.com/questions/1057564/pretty-git-branch-graphs) — torek
– torek, Commented Nov 5, 2021 at 8:07

LeGEC · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-05 13:04:30Z

1

You get the invalid upstream <xxx> message when <xxx> doesn't match anything known to git.

In your case : if you are on a fresh branch with only 3 commits, HEAD~3 (the 3rd parent of current commit) does not exist, hence the message.

To squash commits together, you can use :

git reset --soft <sha of the first commit>  # or : git reset --soft HEAD~2
git commit --amend

If you want to use git rebase, there is a special --root option to say "rebase the whole branch" :

git rebase -i --root

answered Nov 5, 2021 at 13:04

LeGEC

53.4k5 gold badges69 silver badges127 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Answer 1