yes, using rebase to avoid spurious merge commits is also a useful practice, but I was referring to "git rebase -i" (interactive), which can be used to remove c

yes, using rebase to avoid spurious merge commits is also a useful practice, but I was referring to "git rebase -i" (interactive), which can be used to remove commits, splitting/squashing commits, editing commits etc. Sometimes you just don't have time to do clean commits (by committing only relevant changes with "git add -p"), or you fix something later which was logically part of a previous commit. Being able to curate the commit history or your local clone, besides pure aesthetics, allows you to present a given contribution to other team members so that they can better understand what you wanted to do and perhaps review the commits.