That's interesting, so you keep the branches from before the squash -- but do you also rename them somehow, to show that they're now "frozen historic versions"?
Actually, what I usually do in Github is set the PR branches to delete when you squash-merge the PR, but then the PR always has an "undelete branch" button you can use forver in case you want to look at the details of the branch and don't have a local copy of the branch.
Interesting, didn't know about that Github functionality.
I'd like to not depend that much on Github, and instead I'm thinking about having some kind of archival repo where noisy boring historical stuff can be saved (but I'd delete the branches in the main repo). Or renaming historical branches, eg adding an "old/" prefix.
That’s what I do, and I find this talk about “throwing away” code history baffling. It’s version control. Git branching is cheap.
I make a ton of backup copies. I rearrange the history to how I want before I share it (git history split is great). I keep my nonsense, others see a readable changeset. (Only downside is the occasional housecleaning of old branches, but after a while their usefulness diminishes.)