Choosing between git rebase and git merge remains one of the most discussed topics in the community. Some may say that you should always use merging, some may say that rebasing is a more correct way to do things. There is no right or wrong way of using these two commands. It mainly depends on the user and the workflow. In the scope of this topic we will show you how to rebase your branch.
Steps to rebasing branch¶
Here are the steps to follow while rebasing a branch:
Fetching changes¶
You should receive the latest changes from a remote git repository. Thus the first step is running git fetch:
git fetch
Integrating changes¶
The second step is running git rebase. Rebase is a Git command which is used to integrate changes from one branch into another. The following command rebase the current branch from master (or choose any other branch like develop, suppose, the name of remote is origin, which is by default):
git rebase origin/master
After git rebase, conflicts may occur. You should resolve them and add your changes by running git add command:
git add .
After resolving the conflicts and adding the changes to the staging area, you must run git rebase with the --continue option:
git rebase --continue
git rebase --abort
Pushing changes¶
The final step is git push (forced). This command uploads local repository content to a remote repository. To do that, run the command below:
git push origin HEAD -f
Here is an alternative and safer way to push your changes:
git push --force-with-lease origin HEAD
Rebasing vs Merging¶
Rebasing and merging are both used to integrate changes from one branch into another differently. They are both used in different scenarios. If you need to update a feature branch, always choose to rebase for maintaining the branch history clean. It keeps the commit history out of the branch, contrary to the git merge command, which is its alternative. While, for individuals, rebasing is not recommended in the case of feature branch because when you share it with other developers, the process may create conflicting repositories. Once you need to put the branch changes into master, use merging. If you use merging too liberally, it will mess up git log and make difficult to understand the history. Merging preserves history whereas rebasing rewrites it. If you need to see the history absolutely the same as it happened, then use merge.
Fetching¶
The git fetch command downloads commits, files, and refs from a remote repository into the local repository. It updates your remote-tracking branches. The git fetch command allows you to see the progress of the central history, not forcing you to merge the changes into your repository. It does not affect your local work process.