Re: [PATCH] branch: let --delete-merged find squash merged branches

From: D. Ben Knoble <ben.knoble@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 29, 2026, 11:18 UTC
Message-ID: <CALnO6CBq5Udc1rbk6efRj1q5pJNUDt-uvmSGDDen=CMH0dFOHQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <d4fd92ea-b1c5-4528-9e9e-0b1ab600891e@app.fastmail.com>

On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 4:17 AM Kristoffer Haugsbakk <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com> wrote:

Show 31 quoted lines

>
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2026, at 09:52, Harald Nordgren wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 9:47 AM Kristoffer Haugsbakk
> > <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Tue, Sep 29, 2026, at 09:30, Harald Nordgren via GitGitGadget wrote:
> >> > From: Harald Nordgren <haraldnordgren@gmail.com>
> >> >
> >> > Branches merged on GitHub with "Squash and merge" or "Rebase and
> >> > merge" are never deleted by "git branch --delete-merged". The upstream
> >> > holds a rewritten copy of their work, so their tips are not reachable
> >> > from it and they look unmerged forever.
> >>
> >> An example closer to git(1)’s home:
> >>
> >>     git merge --squash
> >>     git commit
> >
> > True. But likely it opens up the question of _why_ would anyone on
> > upstream be doing such destructive actions? Well, then the answer is
> > of course that millions of users (including) me do that via GitHub all
> > the time.
> >
> > Maybe I should include both examples in my text.
>
> My *guess* is that `git merge --squash` inspired the forge squashes.
> But the forges popularized it.
>
> The apparent `git merge --squash` approach of using `git log` for
> concatenating the commit messages isn’t that nice in my opinion. So I
> wonder how much it is used.

The same behavior is present in GitHub's default squash merge message, and almost no one I work with bothers to edit it.

It's really sad to lose the opportunity to have good commit messages when using squash-and-merge on a forge---not because we *cannot*, but because the defaults do not *encourage* it (and we all know how defaults affect user behavior!).

Anyway, see https://benknoble.github.io/blog/2024/08/02/github-squash/ for a distillation of my thoughts from working around folks that squash carelessly.

So, anecdotally: it is used widely due to defaults. Blech.

-- 
D. Ben Knoble