>[From the linked HN comment] To erase an entry in the financial ledger of a company is fraud. It is a felony. [..] I believe that VCSes should be treated simil

>[From the linked HN comment] To erase an entry in the financial ledger of a company is fraud. It is a felony. [..] I believe that VCSes should be treated similarly. [..] once you check-in the change - it then becomes part of the permanent record. To alter that transaction after the fact is akin to felony fraud. Yikes. To give a charitable interpretation, that's quite an extreme view. Financial ledgers and VCS histories are not equal and they serve different purposes; the primary purpose of VCS history being to aid in the understanding of the current state of the codebase. In some cases, the "true" activity may provide that understanding, and in others, it may hinder it. Squashing a PR-requested change like "rename new variable based on PR feedback" seems sensible as it reduces noise in the history - definitely not what I'd call fraudulent. To me commits are like documentation and I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to refine that documentation if I think I can improve it for a future reader.