On Donnerstag, 15. Mai 2025 16:55:01 Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit Felix Ernst wrote: > Gitlab allows squashing commits while merging. I suggest to have the > checkbox for this ticked by default. Contributors would still be able to > untick it as they see fit. > > I think "encouraging squashing" is the better default because Gitlab has > features like the "Apply suggestion" button which produces non-descriptive > commits by default. Furthermore especially new contributors might not > manage the commit history in their merge requests. When it finally comes to > merging, the merging person might forget to tick that checkbox, or they > might have only recently been upgraded to a KDE developer account and not > know if they should tick this non-default setting, which will then lead to > a bunch of misleading/confusing/useless commits making their way to the > commit history of the master branch. Even project maintainers are unable to > rectify this then. > > The way to change this default is described in > https://invent.kde.org/help/user/project/merge_requests/squash_and_merge.md > #configure-squash-options-for-a-project. However, this setting is controlled > exclusively by KDE system administrators. In a short discussion with Ben > Cooksley he quite reasonably suggested: "I'm afraid we need a universal > consistent approach across our repositories, otherwise it will cause issues > where people get surprised by different behaviour. I'd suggest starting a > thread regarding the behaviour change to see what the general consensus > is." > (https://invent.kde.org/system/dolphin/-/merge_requests/895#note_1131215) > So this is what I am now doing here. > > So, does anyone mind if we change "Squash commits when merging" to > "Encourage"? > (https://invent.kde.org/help/user/project/merge_requests/squash_and_merge.m > d#configure-squash-options-for-a-project)
Accidentally not squashing is far less destructive than accidentally squashing commits that should not have been squashed, and IME the latter is the more common case, ie. most MRs I review have a sensible history that should be preserved. I'd be totally ok with being forced to explicitly make a decision each time (not sure Gitlab has that option though), but having such a (potentially) destructive option enabled by default is IMHO way too risky. Regards, Volker
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