I encourage developers to clean up their commits but so often they're either unduly nervous about breaking things or have a fascination with "preserving the his

I encourage developers to clean up their commits but so often they're either unduly nervous about breaking things or have a fascination with "preserving the history" (of their branch, which is not yet merged in anywhere). I partly blame the excessive fear mongering around rebasing, where the strict Never Rebase a Pushed Branch rule is drilled into them and they never learn why or when they can break the rule safely. So it's an uphill fight but I just try to teach by demonstrating, frequently, exactly how they can tidy up for the merge request.