> There is more to a git branch than just the overall difference.  Every
> single
> log message and diff is individually valuable.


When the log messages don't accurately describe the contents of the diff,
it's just misinformation and noise. Everyone starts out by wanting a neat
collection of easy to understand and review commits, but in practice it's
extremely hard to always get it.

I know how to make squashed commits, thanks. I've done LOTS of code review
in my life. I'm making a point here as one of the few people who goes
through large pull requests and reviews them line by line. It's hard,
partly because github sucks, and partly because reviewing lots of small
commits sucks.

There's nothing that makes a single large commit harder to review. It's the
same amount of code or strictly less, given the tendency for later commits
to change earlier ones. You can easily search the entire change whilst
reviewing. There are lots of things that make it easier.

FWIW inside Google the code review process is one-commit-one-review.