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Squash and merge

Introduced in GitLab Enterprise Edition 8.17.

Squashing lets you tidy up the commit history of a branch when accepting a merge request. It applies all of the changes in the merge request as a single commit, and then merges that commit using the merge method set for the project.

In other words, squashing a merge request turns a long list of commits:

List of commits from a merge request

Into a single commit on merge:

A squashed commit followed by a merge commit

Note that the squashed commit is still followed by a merge commit, as the merge method for this example repository uses a merge commit. Squashing also works with the fast-forward merge strategy: see squashing and fast-forward merge for more details.

Enabling squash for a merge request

Anyone who can create or edit a merge request can choose for it to be squashed on the merge request form:

Squash commits checkbox on edit form

This can then be overridden at the time of accepting the merge request:

Squash commits checkbox on accept merge request form

Commit metadata for squashed commits

The squashed commit has the following metadata:

  • Message: the title of the merge request.
  • Author: the author of the merge request.
  • Committer: the user who initiated the squash.

Squashing and fast-forward merge

When a project has the fast-forward merge setting enabled, the merge request must be able to be fast-forwarded without squashing in order to squash it. This is because squashing is only available when accepting a merge request, so a merge request may need to be rebased before squashing, even though squashing can itself be considered equivalent to rebasing.