squash2stash

Script that squashes your current git branch changes and stashes it.

Motivation

Like many developers, I found myself creating lots of commits during development with messages like "WIP" or "fixed XYZ". While these commits helped me track my progress, I realized they:

• Made my commit history messy
• Sometimes turned rebasing into a time-consuming mess

My solution to these problems:

Squash all changes from your working branch into a single change and stash it. You can then:

• Create a new "clean" branch
• Apply the stashed changes
• Create a single, well-documented commit
• Rebase if needed

Installation

Put this into your .zshrc:

squash2stash() {
        local target_branch=${1:-origin/main}
        git fetch
        local main_commit="$(git merge-base HEAD $target_branch)"
        local current_branch="$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)"

        git switch -c temp/squash2stash # create temporary branch to not change current branch directly

        git reset --soft "$main_commit"
        git stash
        git switch $current_branch
        git branch -d temp/squash2stash
}

How it works