Git Rebase vs Merge: Stop Guessing and Actually Understand the Difference

Git merge creates a new merge commit that joins two branch histories, preserving the complete record of when and where branches diverged and rejoined. The history is accurate but can become complex in active projects. Git rebase rewrites history by replaying your commits on top of another branch — it moves your commits to start from the tip of the target branch, as if you had started working from there. The result is a linear history that reads cleanly but doesn't preserve the actual timeline of when you started your branch. Both result in the same final code; only the history differs.

No — rebasing rewrites commit hashes, which breaks anyone else who has checked out the branch. The golden rule: never rebase commits that exist on a remote branch that others are working from. If you rebase your local feature branch before pushing (or before merging into main), that's fine — you're only rewriting local, unpushed commits. If you rebase a branch that other team members have pulled, they'll have a diverged history that requires force-pushing and creates significant confusion. Use rebase only on your local, unpushed work; use merge when integrating with shared branches.

Interactive rebase (git rebase -i) lets you edit, reorder, squash, or drop commits before they're pushed. This is the most useful form of rebase for maintaining a clean history. Common uses: squashing 'WIP' and 'fix typo' commits into a single coherent commit before creating a PR; reordering commits so related changes are grouped together; editing a commit message that's already been made; splitting a large commit into smaller logical pieces. Interactive rebase should be done on local branches before pushing — you're polishing your contribution before it becomes part of the shared record.