Proposal: make squash-merging the default behavior for gitlab MRs

[Nate Graham]

Taking stock of the responses so far, it doesn't seem like there's much 
enthusiasm for the original proposal. That's fine, and I can understand 
the desire to push people to improve their git skills. It seems like 
there is some agreement on an alternative, which various people have 
proposed:


On 10/3/20 6:10 AM, David Edmundson wrote:
 > We don't want a default for a merge option, we want an exposed action
 > like the existing rebase button to squash things within the local
 > branch. That would mean reviewers can review commits (and therefore
 > review commit messages properly) and you still provide an easy path for
 > people who can't squash locally. If we only approve when commits
 > themselves are sound, it'll be easy to manage. Win-win.

On 10/5/20 8:21 AM, Volker Krause wrote:
 > Even better might be to force an explicit decision by not having a 
default for
 > this at all, e.g. by offering "Rebase" and "Squash + Rebase" actions 
next to
 > each other.

On 10/5/20 10:38 AM, Ömer Fadıl USTA wrote:
> my suggestion is not making squash default but implement a way that  
> will pops up a question if there are more then 1 commits in mr so user 
> can select on that time.


GitLab already *kind of* offers this, in the form of the "Squash 
commits" checkbox next to the merge button. Apparently it's not obvious 
enough though, because I can think of a bunch of cases of multi-commit 
MRs with mostly garbage commits accidentally not being squashed when 
merging.

Maybe this is just a teething issue that we'll overcome with more 
experience?


Nate