I have a PR for an open-source repository on GitHub. I want to rebase the master branch onto my branch to keep it passing the action checks, and I was also suggested to squash all of the changes I've made because I've made a lot of commits. I have had a lot of discussion across multiple commits, however. If I rebase and then squash all the changes I've made, will I lose all of that discussion history? I don't know if they want to be able to look at the discussion on the PR later, so I don't want to get rid of it. Also if I need to make changes later, I don't want the history to be gone. If I rebase master onto my branch, squash my commits, and then force push, will I lose all discussions?
I haven't tried anything yet because I don't wanna mess up my PR.
You will not lose discussions by squashing - PRs and comments are not a part of Git proper, but instead they're kept in GitHub's database(s). As long as GitHub and that particular repo and that particular PR are available, then your discussions will be too. (Similar deal for other providers.)
That said, GitHub "resolves" inline comments that are no longer directly relevant. For example, if my first commit has a block of code that gets comments, and I remove that block of code in a later commit, then the comments won't be immediately visible. This is unrelated to squashing or merging, though, and those comments are still in the PR's history (they just take a little more work to see).