my rule of thumb is:
rebase
for branches with the same name,merge
otherwise.
examples for same names would be master
, origin/master
and otherRemote/master
.
if develop
exists only in the local repository, and it is always based on a recent origin/master
commit, you should call it master
, and work there directly. it simplifies your life, and presents things as they actually are: you are directly developing on the master
branch.
if develop
is shared, it should not be rebased on master
, just merged back into it with --no-ff
. you are developing on develop
. master
and develop
have different names, because we want them to be different things, and stay separate. do not make them same with rebase
.