You can always keep the un-rebased branch around if you want to preserve the history somewhere, and then squash the commits down to a smaller number on top of m

You can always keep the un-rebased branch around if you want to preserve the history somewhere, and then squash the commits down to a smaller number on top of master. That solves the safety net problem, and master keeps its sanitized history. This is what I do and it's kind of required when you're using e.g. gerrit code reviews.