Git Rebase vs Git Merge

Git Rebase and Git Merge are commands generally used to merge two branches. The difference here is the way they do this combination.

When we typed “git Rebase”, all the changes of the feature branch will be added to the master branch one by one. Here, if we search for a historical history, we will see only one history. Because when we typed “git rebase”, a single history will be created because all branches are collected on a single path.

Advantages of Git Rebase

• Converts complex history into a single format
• Simplifies DevOps work by reducing multiple comments to a single comment.

Advantages of Git Merge

• Simple and clear
• Preserves the history in chronological order
• Protects branches

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Which Should We Use?

If you are working with a single or small team, it will be more advantageous to use git rebase. But if you’re working with a big team, use git merge.

Comments

[Medea]

this really helped, thanks!
so if im working on my own i should use git rebase?

[Anthony Fung]

Yes. That said, I haven't found many cases where I've had to merge or rebase when working on a solo project: I'm typically working on the latest code, and no one else is adding to the branch.

Generally, I'll work on a feature branch that's based off main. When it's ready, I'll just fast-forward merge main into my feature branch, which moves main without creating a merge commit.

While it's not the biggest of repositories, here's an example of a (mostly) solo project of mine

github.com/Ant-f/WorkingFilesList

[Medea]

Ah okay thanks

[Douglas Vieira da Silva]

Yes!

[Anthony Fung]

I'd say in general, rebase where possible as a first preference. There is one very important advantage of rebasing: it keeps the feature branch clean, meaning that it can be (relatively) easy to port to other branches, e.g. for alternative test deployments.

If you rebase and then deliberately create a merge commit into the main branch, you get the best of both worlds. It keeps all working commits together, and makes it easy to revert if necessary to roll back

[webduvet]

I would say it depends not really on the size of a team and project but on what you do.
e.g. multiple devs working on smaller individual features - candidate for merge
e.g. (multiple) devs working and bigger feature or refactor along the regular development, touching a lot of code - candidate for rebase.