Comment by int_19h

I do a combination of the two: the first commit gets a meaningful (but still draft) message, and their follow-ups are all committed with "." as a message - but only until "switching gears", i.e. until a commit comes that is logically separate from the bunch before it. Those commits that have messages then provide logical milestones for squashing.

This breaks down sometimes if you have to switch back and forth between different parts of code, breaking the linear sequence. But even then, the messages make it easier to connect the pieces when it's time to clean up history before the pull request.