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> Along similar lines, I've adopted a hyper-frequent commit pattern in git. I do a bunch of meaningless micro-commits as I'm making progress, and then rewrite them all into one or two meanginful commits once I've reached a working state of whatever I was trying to do.

Aren't you describing a feature branch? That frankly sounds like git 101.

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Nope. A feature branch is still expected to have meaningful commits, and is usually used for collaboration between several coders. Its history doesn't get rewritten.

What OP describes is a temporary work branch that belongs to a single person, and has a bunch of meaningless commits. So nobody else should be using it - or if they do, they need to sync with the owner, since the latter can squash or otherwise mutate commits at any time.

> A feature branch is still expected to have meaningful commits, and is usually used for collaboration between several coders.

No, not really. In fact, some issue tracking software equate feature branches with tickets, worked on by a single person.

> What OP describes is a temporary work branch that belongs to a single person, and has a bunch of meaningless commits.

Aka a feature branch.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, then. In my 20 years in this industry, I've never seen a feature branch like that.

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