When do you use Git rebase instead of Git merge

Question

When is it recommended to use Git rebase vs  Git merge   Do I still need to merge after a successful rebase

User · Answer

While merging is definitely the easiest and most common way to integrate changes, it's not the only one: Rebase is an alternative means of integration.

Understanding Merge a Little Better

When Git performs a merge, it looks for three commits:

(1) Common ancestor commit. If you follow the history of two branches in a project, they always have at least one commit in common: at this point in time, both branches had the same content and then evolved differently.
(2) + (3) Endpoints of each branch. The goal of an integration is to combine the current states of two branches. Therefore, their respective latest revisions are of special interest. Combining these three commits will result in the integration we're aiming for.

Fast-Forward or Merge Commit

In very simple cases, one of the two branches doesn't have any new commits since the branching happened - its latest commit is still the common ancestor.

In this case, performing the integration is dead simple: Git can just add all the commits of the other branch on top of the common ancestor commit. In Git, this simplest form of integration is called a "fast-forward" merge. Both branches then share the exact same history.

In a lot of cases, however, both branches moved forward individually.

To make an integration, Git will have to create a new commit that contains the differences between them - the merge commit.

Human Commits & Merge Commits

Normally, a commit is carefully created by a human being. It's a meaningful unit that wraps only related changes and annotates them with a comment.

A merge commit is a bit different: instead of being created by a developer, it gets created automatically by Git. And instead of wrapping a set of related changes, its purpose is to connect two branches, just like a knot. If you want to understand a merge operation later, you need to take a look at the history of both branches and the corresponding commit graph.

Integrating with Rebase

Some people prefer to go without such automatic merge commits. Instead, they want the project's history to look as if it had evolved in a single, straight line. No indication remains that it had been split into multiple branches at some point.

Let's walk through a rebase operation step by step. The scenario is the same as in the previous examples: we want to integrate the changes from branch-B into branch-A, but now by using rebase.

We will do this in three steps

git rebase branch-A // Synchronises the history with branch-A
git checkout branch-A // Change the current branch to branch-A
git merge branch-B // Merge/take the changes from branch-B to branch-A

First, Git will "undo" all commits on branch-A that happened after the lines began to branch out (after the common ancestor commit). However, of course, it won't discard them: instead you can think of those commits as being "saved away temporarily".

Next, it applies the commits from branch-B that we want to integrate. At this point, both branches look exactly the same.

In the final step, the new commits on branch-A are now reapplied - but on a new position, on top of the integrated commits from branch-B (they are re-based).

The result looks like development had happened in a straight line. Instead of a merge commit that contains all the combined changes, the original commit structure was preserved.

Finally, you get a clean branch branch-A with no unwanted and auto generated commits.

Note: Taken from the awesome post by git-tower. The disadvantages of rebase is also a good read in the same post.

User · Answer

The Pro Git book has a really good explanation on the rebasing page   Basically a merge will take two commits and combine them   A rebase will go to the common ancestor on the two and incrementally apply the changes on top of each other  This makes for a  cleaner  and more linear history   But when you rebase  you abandon previous commits and create new ones  So you should never rebase a repository that is public  The other people working on the repository will hate you   For that reason alone I almost exclusively merge  99  of the time my branches don   t differ that much  so if there are conflicts it s only in one or two places

User · Answer

Some practical examples  somewhat connected to large scale development where Gerrit is used for review and delivery integration   I merge when I uplift my feature branch to a fresh remote master  This gives minimal uplift work and it s easy to follow the history of the feature development in for example gitk   git fetch git checkout origin my feature git merge origin master git commit git push origin HEAD refs for my feature   I merge when I prepare a delivery commit   git fetch git checkout origin master git merge --squash origin my feature git commit git push origin HEAD refs for master   I rebase when my delivery commit fails integration for whatever reason  and I need to update it towards a fresh remote master   git fetch git fetch  lt gerrit link gt  git checkout FETCH HEAD git rebase origin master git push origin HEAD refs for master

User · Answer

This sentence gets it      In general  the way to get the best of both worlds is to rebase local   changes you   ve made  but haven   t shared yet  before you push them in   order to clean up your story  but never rebase anything you   ve pushed   somewhere    Source  3 6 Git Branching - Rebasing  Rebase vs  Merge

User · Answer

TLDR  It depends on what is most important - a tidy history or a true representation of the sequence of development  If a tidy history is the most important  then you would rebase first and then merge your changes  so it is clear exactly what the new code is  If you have already pushed your branch  don t rebase unless you can deal with the consequences   If true representation of sequence is the most important  you would merge without rebasing    Merge means  Create a single new commit that merges my changes into the destination  Note  This new commit will have two parents - the latest commit from your string of commits and the latest commit of the other branch you re merging   Rebase means  Create a whole new series of commits  using my current set of commits as hints  In other words  calculate what my changes would have looked like if I had started making them from the point I m rebasing on to  After the rebase  therefore  you might need to re-test your changes and during the rebase  you would possibly have a few conflicts   Given this  why would you rebase  Just to keep the development history clear  Let s say you re working on feature X and when you re done  you merge your changes in  The destination will now have a single commit that would say something along the lines of  Added feature X   Now  instead of merging  if you rebased and then merged  the destination development history would contain all the individual commits in a single logical progression  This makes reviewing changes later on much easier  Imagine how hard you d find it to review the development history if 50 developers were merging various features all the time   That said  if you have already pushed the branch you re working on upstream  you should not rebase  but merge instead  For branches that have not been pushed upstream  rebase  test and merge   Another time you might want to rebase is when you want to get rid of commits from your branch before pushing upstream  For example  Commits that introduce some debugging code early on and other commits further on that clean that code up  The only way to do this is by performing an interactive rebase  git rebase -i  lt branch commit tag gt   UPDATE  You also want to use rebase when you re using Git to interface to a version control system that doesn t support non-linear history  Subversion for example   When using the git-svn bridge  it is very important that the changes you merge back into Subversion are a sequential list of changes on top of the most recent changes in trunk  There are only two ways to do that   1  Manually re-create the changes and  2  Using the rebase command  which is a lot faster   UPDATE 2  One additional way to think of a rebase is that it enables a sort of mapping from your development style to the style accepted in the repository you re committing to  Let s say you like to commit in small  tiny chunks  You have one commit to fix a typo  one commit to get rid of unused code and so on  By the time you ve finished what you need to do  you have a long series of commits  Now let s say the repository you re committing to encourages large commits  so for the work you re doing  one would expect one or maybe two commits  How do you take your string of commits and compress them to what is expected  You would use an interactive rebase and squash your tiny commits into fewer larger chunks  The same is true if the reverse was needed - if your style was a few large commits  but the repository demanded long strings of small commits  You would use a rebase to do that as well  If you had merged instead  you have now grafted your commit style onto the main repository  If there are a lot of developers  you can imagine how hard it would be to follow a history with several different commit styles after some time   UPDATE 3  Does one still need to merge after a successful rebase  Yes  you do  The reason is that a rebase essentially involves a  shifting  of commits  As I ve said above  these commits are calculated  but if you had 14 commits from the point of branching  then assuming nothing goes wrong with your rebase  you will be 14 commits ahead  of the point you re rebasing onto  after the rebase is done  You had a branch before a rebase  You will have a branch of the same length after  You still need to merge before you publish your changes  In other words  rebase as many times as you want  again  only if you have not pushed your changes upstream   Merge only after you rebase

User · Answer

Generally use merge If you are only one developer you can use rebase  to have a clear history  In shared projects don t use rebase because cache sums are changed

User · Answer

I just created a FAQ for my team in my own words which answers this question  Let me share  What is a merge  A commit  that combines all changes of a different branch into the current  What is a rebase  Re-comitting all commits of the current branch onto a different base commit  What are the main differences between merge and rebase   merge executes only one new commit  rebase typically executes multiple  number of commits in current branch   merge produces a new generated commit  the so called merge-commit   rebase only moves existing commits   In which situations should we use a merge  Use merge whenever you want to add changes of a branched out branch back into the base branch  Typically  you do this by clicking the  quot Merge quot  button on Pull Merge Requests  e g  on GitHub  In which situations should we use a rebase  Use rebase whenever you want to add changes of a base branch back to a branched out branch  Typically  you do this in feature branches whenever there s a change in the main branch  Why not use merge to merge changes from the base branch into a feature branch   The git history will include many unnecessary merge commits  If multiple merges were needed in a feature branch  then the feature branch might even hold more merge commits than actual commits   This creates a loop which destroys the mental model that Git was designed by which causes troubles in any visualization of the Git history  Imagine there s a river  e g  the  quot Nile quot    Water is flowing in one direction  direction of time in Git history   Now and then  imagine there s a branch to that river and suppose most of those branches merge back into the river  That s what the flow of a river might look like naturally  It makes sense  But then imagine there s a small branch of that river  Then  for some reason  the river merges into the branch and the branch continues from there  The river has now technically disappeared  it s now in the branch  But then  somehow magically  that branch is merged back into the river  Which river you ask  I don t know  The river should actually be in the branch now  but somehow it still continues to exist and I can merge the branch back into the river  So  the river is in the river  Kind of doesn t make sense  This is exactly what happens when you merge the base branch into a feature branch and then when the feature branch is done  you merge that back into the base branch again  The mental model is broken  And because of that  you end up with a branch visualization that s not very helpful    Example Git History when using merge   Note the many commits starting with Merge branch  develop  into      They don t even exist if you rebase  there  you will only have pull request merge commits   Also many visual branch merge loops  develop into feature into develop   Example Git History when using rebase   Much cleaner Git history with much less merge commits and no cluttered visual branch merge loops whatsoever  Are there any downsides   pitfalls with rebase  Yes   Because a rebase moves commits  technically re-executes them   the commit date of all moved commits will be the time of the rebase and the git history loses the initial commit time  So  if the exact date of a commit is needed for some reason  then merge is the better option  But typically  a clean git history is much more useful than exact commit dates  If the rebased branch has multiple commits that change the same line and that line was also changed in the base branch  you might need to solve merge conflicts for that same line multiple times  which you never need to do when merging  So  on average  there s more merge conflicts to solve   Tips to reduce merge conflicts when using rebase   Rebase often  I typically recommend doing it at least once a day  Try to squash changes on the same line into one commit as much as possible

User · Answer

Before merge rebase   A  lt - B  lt - C     master         D  lt - E        branch    After git merge master   A  lt - B  lt - C                            D  lt - E  lt - F   After git rebase master   A  lt - B  lt - C  lt - D   lt - E     A  B  C  D  E and F are commits   This example and much more well illustrated information about Git can be found in Git The Basics Tutorial

User · Answer

It was explained many times what rebase and what merge is  but when should you use what  When should you use rebase  Rebase  quot lifts off quot  your changes and puts all the changes of the rebased branch into your current branch and then puts your changes on top of it  It therefore changes the history of your branch   when you have not pushed the branch   no one else is working on it you want your to see all your changes at one point together when merging back to the source branch you want to avoid the auto-generated  quot merged    quot  commit messages  I said  quot you want to see all your changes at one place quot  because sometimes a merge operation puts all your changes together in one commit  some  merged from     message   Rebase makes your change look like you made your commits all after each other with no one else doing something in between  This makes it easier to see  what you changed for your feature  Make sure though  you use git merge feature-branch --ff-only to make sure there are no conflicts creating a single commit when you are merging your feature back to develop master  When should you use merge   when you have pushed the branch   others are working on it too  rebase gets very complicated if others work on that branch too   you don t need the full history      your feature doesn t have to have it s commits all in one place       you can avoid that your feature only gets one  quot merged    quot  commits by first merging the develop branch to your feature and then merging your feature back to develeop  This still gives you a  quot merged    quot  commit  but a least all the commits of your feature are still visible

User · Answer

This answer is widely oriented around Git Flow  The tables have been generated with the nice ASCII Table Generator  and the history trees with this wonderful command  aliased as git lg    git log --graph --abbrev-commit --decorate --date format   Y- m- d  H  M  S  --format format   C bold blue  h C reset  -  C bold cyan  ad C reset   C bold green   ar  C reset  C bold yellow  d C reset  n             C white  s C reset   C dim white -  an C reset     Tables are in reverse chronological order to be more consistent with the history trees  See also the difference between git merge and git merge --no-ff first  you usually want to use git merge --no-ff as it makes your history look closer to the reality    git merge  Commands   Time          Branch  develop              Branch  features foo  ------- ------------------------------ ------------------------------- 15 04   git merge features foo 15 03                                  git commit -m  Third commit  15 02                                  git commit -m  Second commit  15 01   git checkout -b features foo 15 00   git commit -m  First commit    Result     142a74a - YYYY-MM-DD 15 03 00  XX minutes ago   HEAD - gt  develop  features foo              Third commit - Christophe   00d848c - YYYY-MM-DD 15 02 00  XX minutes ago              Second commit - Christophe   298e9c5 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 00 00  XX minutes ago              First commit - Christophe   git merge --no-ff  Commands   Time           Branch  develop               Branch  features foo  ------- -------------------------------- ------------------------------- 15 04   git merge --no-ff features foo 15 03                                    git commit -m  Third commit  15 02                                    git commit -m  Second commit  15 01   git checkout -b features foo 15 00   git commit -m  First commit    Result       1140d8c - YYYY-MM-DD 15 04 00  XX minutes ago   HEAD - gt  develop                Merge branch  features foo  - Christophe     69f4a7a - YYYY-MM-DD 15 03 00  XX minutes ago   features foo                Third commit - Christophe     2973183 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 02 00  XX minutes ago                Second commit - Christophe   c173472 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 00 00  XX minutes ago              First commit - Christophe     git merge vs git rebase  First point  always merge features into develop  never rebase develop from features  This is a consequence of the Golden Rule of Rebasing      The golden rule of git rebase is to never use it on public branches    In other words      Never rebase anything you ve pushed somewhere    I would personally add  unless it s a feature branch AND you and your team are aware of the consequences   So the question of git merge vs git rebase applies almost only to the feature branches  in the following examples  --no-ff has always been used when merging   Note that since I m not sure there s one better solution  a debate exists   I ll only provide how both commands behave  In my case  I prefer using git rebase as it produces a nicer history tree     Between feature branches  git merge  Commands   Time           Branch  develop               Branch  features foo            Branch  features bar  ------- -------------------------------- ------------------------------- -------------------------------- 15 10   git merge --no-ff features bar 15 09   git merge --no-ff features foo 15 08                                                                    git commit -m  Sixth commit  15 07                                                                    git merge --no-ff features foo 15 06                                                                    git commit -m  Fifth commit  15 05                                                                    git commit -m  Fourth commit  15 04                                    git commit -m  Third commit  15 03                                    git commit -m  Second commit  15 02   git checkout -b features bar 15 01   git checkout -b features foo 15 00   git commit -m  First commit    Result       c0a3b89 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 10 00  XX minutes ago   HEAD - gt  develop                Merge branch  features bar  - Christophe     37e933e - YYYY-MM-DD 15 08 00  XX minutes ago   features bar                Sixth commit - Christophe       eb5e657 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 07 00  XX minutes ago                  Merge branch  features foo  into features bar - Christophe       2e4086f - YYYY-MM-DD 15 06 00  XX minutes ago                  Fifth commit - Christophe       31e3a60 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 05 00  XX minutes ago                  Fourth commit - Christophe         98b439f - YYYY-MM-DD 15 09 00  XX minutes ago                    Merge branch  features foo  - Christophe                       6579c9c - YYYY-MM-DD 15 04 00  XX minutes ago   features foo                Third commit - Christophe     3f41d96 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 03 00  XX minutes ago                Second commit - Christophe   14edc68 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 00 00  XX minutes ago              First commit - Christophe   git rebase  Commands   Time           Branch  develop               Branch  features foo            Branch  features bar  ------- -------------------------------- ------------------------------- ------------------------------- 15 10   git merge --no-ff features bar 15 09   git merge --no-ff features foo 15 08                                                                    git commit -m  Sixth commit  15 07                                                                    git rebase features foo 15 06                                                                    git commit -m  Fifth commit  15 05                                                                    git commit -m  Fourth commit  15 04                                    git commit -m  Third commit  15 03                                    git commit -m  Second commit  15 02   git checkout -b features bar 15 01   git checkout -b features foo 15 00   git commit -m  First commit    Result       7a99663 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 10 00  XX minutes ago   HEAD - gt  develop                Merge branch  features bar  - Christophe     708347a - YYYY-MM-DD 15 08 00  XX minutes ago   features bar                Sixth commit - Christophe     949ae73 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 06 00  XX minutes ago                Fifth commit - Christophe     108b4c7 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 05 00  XX minutes ago                Fourth commit - Christophe       189de99 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 09 00  XX minutes ago                  Merge branch  features foo  - Christophe          26835a0 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 04 00  XX minutes ago   features foo                Third commit - Christophe     a61dd08 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 03 00  XX minutes ago                Second commit - Christophe   ae6f5fc - YYYY-MM-DD 15 00 00  XX minutes ago              First commit - Christophe   From develop to a feature branch  git merge  Commands   Time           Branch  develop               Branch  features foo            Branch  features bar  ------- -------------------------------- ------------------------------- ------------------------------- 15 10   git merge --no-ff features bar 15 09                                                                    git commit -m  Sixth commit  15 08                                                                    git merge --no-ff develop 15 07   git merge --no-ff features foo 15 06                                                                    git commit -m  Fifth commit  15 05                                                                    git commit -m  Fourth commit  15 04                                    git commit -m  Third commit  15 03                                    git commit -m  Second commit  15 02   git checkout -b features bar 15 01   git checkout -b features foo 15 00   git commit -m  First commit    Result       9e6311a - YYYY-MM-DD 15 10 00  XX minutes ago   HEAD - gt  develop                Merge branch  features bar  - Christophe     3ce9128 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 09 00  XX minutes ago   features bar                Sixth commit - Christophe       d0cd244 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 08 00  XX minutes ago                  Merge branch  develop  into features bar - Christophe                5bd5f70 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 07 00  XX minutes ago                  Merge branch  features foo  - Christophe       4ef3853 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 04 00  XX minutes ago   features foo                  Third commit - Christophe       3227253 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 03 00  XX minutes ago                  Second commit - Christophe     b5543a2 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 06 00  XX minutes ago                Fifth commit - Christophe     5e84b79 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 05 00  XX minutes ago                Fourth commit - Christophe   2da6d8d - YYYY-MM-DD 15 00 00  XX minutes ago              First commit - Christophe   git rebase  Commands   Time           Branch  develop               Branch  features foo            Branch  features bar  ------- -------------------------------- ------------------------------- ------------------------------- 15 10   git merge --no-ff features bar 15 09                                                                    git commit -m  Sixth commit  15 08                                                                    git rebase develop 15 07   git merge --no-ff features foo 15 06                                                                    git commit -m  Fifth commit  15 05                                                                    git commit -m  Fourth commit  15 04                                    git commit -m  Third commit  15 03                                    git commit -m  Second commit  15 02   git checkout -b features bar 15 01   git checkout -b features foo 15 00   git commit -m  First commit    Result       b0f6752 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 10 00  XX minutes ago   HEAD - gt  develop                Merge branch  features bar  - Christophe     621ad5b - YYYY-MM-DD 15 09 00  XX minutes ago   features bar                Sixth commit - Christophe     9cb1a16 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 06 00  XX minutes ago                Fifth commit - Christophe     b8ddd19 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 05 00  XX minutes ago                Fourth commit - Christophe     856433e - YYYY-MM-DD 15 07 00  XX minutes ago                Merge branch  features foo  - Christophe     694ac81 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 04 00  XX minutes ago   features foo                Third commit - Christophe     5fd94d3 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 03 00  XX minutes ago                Second commit - Christophe   d01d589 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 00 00  XX minutes ago              First commit - Christophe     Side notes  git cherry-pick  When you just need one specific commit  git cherry-pick is a nice solution  the -x option appends a line that says   cherry picked from commit      to the original commit message body  so it s usually a good idea to use it - git log  lt commit sha1 gt  to see it    Commands   Time           Branch  develop               Branch  features foo                 Branch  features bar  ------- -------------------------------- ------------------------------- ----------------------------------------- 15 10   git merge --no-ff features bar 15 09   git merge --no-ff features foo 15 08                                                                    git commit -m  Sixth commit  15 07                                                                    git cherry-pick -x  lt second commit sha1 gt  15 06                                                                    git commit -m  Fifth commit  15 05                                                                    git commit -m  Fourth commit  15 04                                    git commit -m  Third commit  15 03                                    git commit -m  Second commit  15 02   git checkout -b features bar 15 01   git checkout -b features foo 15 00   git commit -m  First commit    Result       50839cd - YYYY-MM-DD 15 10 00  XX minutes ago   HEAD - gt  develop                Merge branch  features bar  - Christophe     0cda99f - YYYY-MM-DD 15 08 00  XX minutes ago   features bar                Sixth commit - Christophe     f7d6c47 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 03 00  XX minutes ago                Second commit - Christophe     dd7d05a - YYYY-MM-DD 15 06 00  XX minutes ago                Fifth commit - Christophe     d0d759b - YYYY-MM-DD 15 05 00  XX minutes ago                Fourth commit - Christophe       1a397c5 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 09 00  XX minutes ago                  Merge branch  features foo  - Christophe              0600a72 - YYYY-MM-DD 15 04 00  XX minutes ago   features foo                Third commit - Christophe     f4c127a - YYYY-MM-DD 15 03 00  XX minutes ago                Second commit - Christophe   0cf894c - YYYY-MM-DD 15 00 00  XX minutes ago              First commit - Christophe   git pull --rebase  I am not sure I can explain it better than Derek Gourlay    Basically  use git pull --rebase instead of git pull    What s missing in the article though  is that you can enable it by default   git config --global pull rebase true   git rerere  Again  nicely explained here  But put simply  if you enable it  you won t have to resolve the same conflict multiple times anymore

User · Answer

Git rebase is used to make the branching paths in history cleaner and repository structure linear    It is also used to keep the branches created by you private  as after rebasing and pushing the changes to the server  if you delete your branch  there will be no evidence of branch you have worked on  So your branch is now your local concern   After doing rebase we also get rid of an extra commit which we used to see if we do a normal merge    And yes  one still needs to do merge after a successful rebase as the rebase command just puts your work on top of the branch you mentioned during rebase  say master  and makes the first commit of your branch as a direct descendant of the master branch  This means we can now do a fast forward merge to bring changes from this branch to the master branch

User · Answer

When do I use git rebase  Almost never  because it rewrites history  git merge is almost always the preferable choice  because it respects what actually happened in your project

User · Answer

To complement my own answer mentioned by TSamper    a rebase is quite often a good idea to do before a merge  because the idea is that you integrate in your branch Y the work of the branch B upon which you will merge   But again  before merging  you resolve any conflict in your branch  i e    rebase   as in  replay my work in my branch starting from a recent point from the branch B    If done correctly  the subsequent merge from your branch to branch B can be fast-forward  a merge directly impacts the destination branch B  which means the merges better be trivial  otherwise that branch B can be long to get back to a stable state  time for you solve all the conflicts         the point of merging after a rebase    In the case that I describe  I rebase B onto my branch  just to have the opportunity to replay my work from a more recent point from B  but while staying into my branch   In this case  a merge is still needed to bring my  replayed  work onto B   The other scenario  described in Git Ready for instance   is to bring your work directly in B through a rebase  which does conserve all your nice commits  or even give you the opportunity to re-order them through an interactive rebase    In that case  where you rebase while being in the B branch   you are right  no further merge is needed   A Git tree at default when we have not merged nor rebased    we get by rebasing     That second scenario is all about  how do I get new-feature back into master   My point  by describing the first rebase scenario  is to remind everyone that a rebase can also be used as a preliminary step to that  that being  get new-feature back into master     You can use rebase to first bring master  in  the new-feature branch  the rebase will replay new-feature commits from the HEAD master  but still in the new-feature branch  effectively moving your branch starting point from an old master commit to HEAD-master   That allows you to resolve any conflicts in your branch  meaning  in isolation  while allowing master to continue to evolve in parallel if your conflict resolution stage takes too long    Then you can switch to master and merge new-feature  or rebase new-feature onto master if you want to preserve commits done in your new-feature branch    So     rebase vs  merge  can be viewed as two ways to import a work on  say  master  But  rebase then merge  can be a valid workflow to first resolve conflict in isolation  then bring back your work

User · Answer

TL DR  If you have any doubt  use merge   Short Answer  The only differences between a rebase and a merge are    The resulting tree structure of the history  generally only noticeable when looking at a commit graph  is different  one will have branches  the other won t   Merge will generally create an extra commit  e g  node in the tree   Merge and rebase will handle conflicts differently   Rebase will present conflicts one commit at a time where merge will present them all at once    So the short answer is to pick rebase or merge based on what you want your history to look like   Long Answer  There are a few factors you should consider when choosing which operation to use   Is the branch you are getting changes from shared with other developers outside your team  e g  open source  public    If so  don t rebase   Rebase destroys the branch and those developers will have broken inconsistent repositories unless they use git pull --rebase   This is a good way to upset other developers quickly   How skilled is your development team   Rebase is a destructive operation   That means  if you do not apply it correctly  you could lose committed work and or break the consistency of other developer s repositories   I ve worked on teams where the developers all came from a time when companies could afford dedicated staff to deal with branching and merging   Those developers don t know much about Git and don t want to know much   In these teams I wouldn t risk recommending rebasing for any reason   Does the branch itself represent useful information  Some teams use the branch-per-feature model where each branch represents a feature  or bugfix  or sub-feature  etc    In this model the branch helps identify sets of related commits   For example  one can quickly revert a feature by reverting the merge of that branch  to be fair  this is a rare operation    Or diff a feature by comparing two branches  more common    Rebase would destroy the branch and this would not be straightforward   I ve also worked on teams that used the branch-per-developer model  we ve all been there    In this case the branch itself doesn t convey any additional information  the commit already has the author    There would be no harm in rebasing   Might you want to revert the merge for any reason   Reverting  as in undoing  a rebase is considerably difficult and or impossible  if the rebase had conflicts  compared to reverting a merge   If you think there is a chance you will want to revert then use merge   Do you work on a team   If so  are you willing to take an all or nothing approach on this branch   Rebase operations need to be pulled with a corresponding git pull --rebase   If you are working by yourself you may be able to remember which you should use at the appropriate time   If you are working on a team this will be very difficult to coordinate   This is why most rebase workflows recommend using rebase for all merges  and git pull --rebase for all pulls    Common Myths  Merge destroys history  squashes commits   Assuming you have the following merge       B -- C               A--------D   Some people will state that the merge  destroys  the commit history because if you were to look at the log of only the master branch  A -- D  you would miss the important commit messages contained in B and C   If this were true we wouldn t have questions like this   Basically  you will see B and C unless you explicitly ask not to see them  using --first-parent    This is very easy to try for yourself   Rebase allows for safer simpler merges  The two approaches merge differently  but it is not clear that one is always better than the other and it may depend on the developer workflow   For example  if a developer tends to commit regularly  e g  maybe they commit twice a day as they transition from work to home  then there could be a lot of commits for a given branch   Many of those commits might not look anything like the final product  I tend to refactor my approach once or twice per feature    If someone else was working on a related area of code and they tried to rebase my changes it could be a fairly tedious operation   Rebase is cooler   sexier   more professional  If you like to alias rm to rm -rf to  save time  then maybe rebase is for you   My Two Cents  I always think that someday I will come across a scenario where Git rebase is the awesome tool that solves the problem  Much like I think I will come across a scenario where Git reflog is an awesome tool that solves my problem  I have worked with Git for over five years now  It hasn t happened   Messy histories have never really been a problem for me   I don t ever just read my commit history like an exciting novel   A majority of the time I need a history I am going to use Git blame or Git bisect anyway  In that case  having the merge commit is actually useful to me  because if the merge introduced the issue  that is meaningful information to me   Update  4 2017   I feel obligated to mention that I have personally softened on using rebase although my general advice still stands   I have recently been interacting a lot with the Angular 2 Material project   They have used rebase to keep a very clean commit history   This has allowed me to very easily see what commit fixed a given defect and whether or not that commit was included in a release   It serves as a great example of using rebase correctly

User · Answer

It s simple  With rebase you say to use another branch as the new base for your work   If you have  for example  a branch master  you create a branch to implement a new feature  and say you name it cool-feature  of course the master branch is the base for your new feature   Now at a certain point you want to add the new feature you implemented in the master branch  You could just switch to master and merge the cool-feature branch     git checkout master   git merge cool-feature   But this way a new dummy commit is added  If you want to avoid spaghetti-history you can rebase     git checkout cool-feature   git rebase master   And then merge it in master     git checkout master   git merge cool-feature   This time  since the topic branch has the same commits of master plus the commits with the new feature  the merge will be just a fast-forward

User · Answer

Short Version  Merge takes all the changes in one branch and merges them into another branch in one commit  Rebase says I want the point at which I branched to move to a new starting point  So when do you use either one  Merge  Let s say you have created a branch for the purpose of developing a single feature   When you want to bring those changes back to master  you probably want merge  you don t care about maintaining all of the interim commits    Rebase  A second scenario would be if you started doing some development and then another developer made an unrelated change  You probably want to pull and then rebase to base your changes from the current version from the repository

User · Answer

A lot of answers here say that merging turns all your commits into one  and therefore suggest to use rebase to preserve your commits  This is incorrect  And a bad idea if you have pushed your commits already   Merge does not obliterate your commits  Merge preserves history   just look at gitk  Rebase rewrites history  which is a Bad Thing after you ve pushed it   Use merge -- not rebase whenever you ve already pushed   Here is Linus   author of Git  take on it  now hosted on my own blog  as recovered by the Wayback Machine   It s a really good read    Or you can read my own version of the same idea below   Rebasing a branch on master    provides an incorrect idea of how commits were created pollutes master with a bunch of intermediate commits that may not have been well tested could actually introduce build breaks on these intermediate commits because of changes that were made to master between when the original topic branch was created and when it was rebased  makes finding good places in master to checkout difficult  Causes the timestamps on commits to not align with their chronological order in the tree  So you would see that commit A precedes commit B in master  but commit B was authored first   What    Produces more conflicts  because individual commits in the topic branch can each involve merge conflicts which must be individually resolved  further lying in history about what happened in each commit   is a rewrite of history  If the branch being rebased has been pushed anywhere  shared with anyone other than yourself  then you ve screwed up everyone else who has that branch since you ve rewritten history    In contrast  merging a topic branch into master    preserves history of where topic branches were created  including any merges from master to the topic branch to help keep it current  You really get an accurate idea of what code the developer was working with when they were building  master is a branch made up mostly of merges  and each of those merge commits are typically  good points  in history that are safe to check out  because that s where the topic branch was ready to be integrated  all the individual commits of the topic branch are preserved  including the fact that they were in a topic branch  so isolating those changes is natural and you can drill in where required  merge conflicts only have to be resolved once  at the point of the merge   so intermediate commit changes made in the topic branch don t have to be resolved independently  can be done multiple times smoothly  If you integrate your topic branch to master periodically  folks can keep building on the topic branch  and it can keep being merged independently

[git] When do you use Git rebase instead of Git merge?

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