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I much prefer to see one squashed commit over an endless stream of "fix typo", "small fix", "fixup", "forgot XYZ"...

Don't approve PRs that have those commits.

A PR doesn't necessarily have to be a single commit to be a good PR. Sometimes, it makes sense for a PR to have several atomic commits.

Those tiny messy commits should be fixed-up into the atomic commit that they are fixing.

That is 100% correct and I agree. Actually, I always try to make a PR as a series of small, self-contained commits. I just wanted to point out the, IME, strong correlation between people that leave a bunch of "small fix" commits and them not using squash/rebase but "normal" merge.

I've been taking a different tactic. I have been using git-patch-stack https://git-ps.sh/, and making all my PRs be 1 commit, and trying to keep my PRs smaller using feature flags and things of that nature that allow me to deliver smaller incremental units of work. This tool is amazing, i highly recommend it. It's wonderful for being able to hack away on a huge change and still deliver tiny incremental PRs from it as you go along.

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