Earlier quoted context omitted.
don't know why, but recent teams around me have always made strict rules about number of commits in PRs. I just wanted to tell them the same thing you said: "Why don't you just look at the diffs?" curious for other opinions. (sorry not really about this particular topic)
I prefer to have clear commits that tell a tidy story. For example: * Refactor function `foo` to accept a second parameter * Add function `bar` * Use `bar` and `foo` in component `Baz` to implement feature #X If you give me a commit history like this, I can easily validate that each step in your claimed process does what you describe. If you instead give me a messy history and ask me to read the diff, you might know…
What you should be doing is breaking down PRs more finely so that your unrelated refactors are all separate single-commit PRs. That ofc requires that your pr review round trip time is fast