squash commits first

With this error message Gerrit rejects to push a commit if it contains the same Change-Id as a predecessor commit.

The reason for rejecting such a commit is that it would introduce, for the corresponding change in Gerrit, a dependency upon itself. Gerrit prevents such dependencies between patch sets within the same change to keep the review process simple. Otherwise reviewers would not only have to review the latest patch set but also all the patch sets the latest one depends on.

This error is quite common, it appears when a user tries to address review comments and creates a new commit instead of amending the existing commit. Another possibility for this error, although less likely, is that the user tried to create a patch series with multiple changes to be reviewed and accidentally included the same Change-Id into the different commit messages.

Example

Here an example about how the push is failing. Please note that the two commits 'one commit' and 'another commit' both have the same Change-Id (of course in real life it can happen that there are more than two commits that have the same Change-Id).

  $ git log
  commit 13d381265ffff88088e1af88d0e2c2c1143743cd
  Author: John Doe <john.doe@example.com>
  Date:   Thu Dec 16 10:15:48 2010 +0100

      another commit

      Change-Id: I93478acac09965af91f03c82e55346214811ac79

  commit ca45e125145b12fe9681864b123bc9daea501bf7
  Author: John Doe <john.doe@example.com>
  Date:   Thu Dec 16 10:12:54 2010 +0100

      one commit

      Change-Id: I93478acac09965af91f03c82e55346214811ac79

  $ git push ssh://JohnDoe@host:29418/myProject HEAD:refs/for/master
  Counting objects: 8, done.
  Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
  Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
  Writing objects: 100% (6/6), 558 bytes, done.
  Total 6 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
  To ssh://JohnDoe@host:29418/myProject
   ! [remote rejected] HEAD -> refs/for/master (squash commits first)
  error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://JohnDoe@host:29418/myProject'

If it was the intention to rework a change and push a new patch set, the problem can be fixed by squashing the commits that contain the same Change-Id. The squashed commit can then be pushed to Gerrit.

To squash the commits, use git rebase -i to do an interactive rebase. For the example above where the last two commits have the same Change-Id, this means an interactive rebase for the last two commits should be done. For further details about the git rebase command please check the Git documentation for rebase.

  $ git rebase -i HEAD~2

  pick ca45e12 one commit
  squash 13d3812 another commit

  [detached HEAD ab37207] squashed commit
   1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
  Successfully rebased and updated refs/heads/master.

  $ git log
  commit ab37207d33647685801dba36cb4fd51f3eb73507
  Author: John Doe <john.doe@example.com>
  Date:   Thu Dec 16 10:12:54 2010 +0100

      squashed commit

      Change-Id: I93478acac09965af91f03c82e55346214811ac79

  $ git push ssh://JohnDoe@host:29418/myProject HEAD:refs/for/master
  Counting objects: 5, done.
  Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 307 bytes, done.
  Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
  To ssh://JohnDoe@host:29418/myProject
   * [new branch]      HEAD -> refs/for/master

If it was the intention to create a patch series with multiple changes to be reviewed, each commit message should contain the Change-Id of the corresponding change in Gerrit. If a change in Gerrit does not exist yet, the Change-Id should be generated (either by using a commit hook or by using EGit) or the Change-Id could be removed (not recommended since then amending this commit to create subsequent patch sets is more error prone). To change the Change-Id of an existing commit do an interactive git rebase and fix the affected commit messages.

Part of Gerrit Error Messages