Squash Merge

A commit containing exactly one logical change, complete and independently sound.

Server-side rules that stop people from pushing straight to important branches, requiring reviews, passing checks, and intact history instead.

The convention governing what branches exist, what they mean, and how work reaches production.

A curated, human-readable record of the notable changes in each version of a project, written for the people who use it rather than the people who built it.

A second person reading a change before it lands, and the practices that make it worth the time.

A recorded snapshot of a project with a message explaining it.

The note attached to each change in version control, conventionally a short summary line and a body explaining why, which becomes the main record of intent for anyone who later wonders why the code is the way it is.

Cryptographically signing Git commits so a commit's author can be verified rather than merely claimed, the key types used, and what a green verified badge does and does not prove.

A lightweight convention giving commit messages a machine-readable type and scope.

The two basic ways Git joins branches, by sliding a branch pointer forward or by recording a new commit with two parents, and how the choice shapes a project's history.

A branch created to develop one change in isolation before merging it back, a workflow that keeps the main line stable but grows riskier the longer the branch lives, since its divergence from everyone else's work compounds.

Overwriting a remote branch with local history that doesn't contain it, the operation that makes rewritten history shareable and silently deletes other people's work when used carelessly.

Finding the commit that introduced a bug by binary search through history, testing the midpoint between a known-good and a known-bad version until one commit remains.

Showing, for every line of a file, the commit and author that last changed it, the starting point for finding out why code is the way it is.

Git's shelf for uncommitted work, which clears the working tree so you can switch tasks, and the reasons a throwaway commit or a second worktree is often the better shelf.

Git's tool for rewriting a series of commits before sharing them, reordering, combining, splitting, and rewording them so the history tells a clear story rather than recording every false start.

The recorded origin of a change or a claim — who made it, when, and on what evidence.

A proposal to merge a branch, carrying review, automated checks, and the discussion around it.

Git's private record of everywhere HEAD and each branch has pointed, the safety net that makes a botched reset, rebase, or deleted branch recoverable for weeks.

Everyone integrating into one shared branch continuously, with short-lived feature branches.

A system recording the history of a project's files, enabling branching, merging, and recovery.