GitHub has announced the release of GitHub Desktop 2.9. New features include the ability to squash and reorder commits, amend previous commits, and start new branches from earlier commits.
According to GitHub, commit history is often used by developers to tell a story about the progression of a project. Now, developers will be able to drag commits on top of each other to squash them together and add a new commit message to that grouping. When merging, they will be able to squash and rebase as part of the merge. In addition, developers will now be able to drag commits in the history to reorder them.
The next new feature in GitHub Desktop 2.9 is the ability to make changes to or update the commit message of the previous commit. This is intended for small changes, as there is already an existing undo feature in GitHub Desktop that reverts things back to the previous commit.
GitHub Desktop 2.9 also features the ability to start a new branch from an earlier commit. This enables developers to view the state of a repository at a previous point in time without impacting the branch currently being worked on.
This release also introduces native support for Apple M1 Silicon. This will improve performance and reduce the number of crashes, according to GitHub.
