Git: When and why use git rebase

Question

whenever i start developing any new feature i checkout to new branch and rebased that branch with develop branch. in my case develop is the base branch. if the develop branch is updated while i am working on feature branch i simply checkout to develop branch and take the pull of that branch and then checkout to my feature branch and rebased it with develop branch again.

i want to know what would happen if i do git merge instead of git rebase in this process.

git workflow:

git checkout develop
git pull origin develop

git checkout -b CM-255/feature
git rebase develop   #what will happen if i use git merge here instead of git rebase
git commit -m "example"
git push origin CM-255/feature

create pull request for CM-255/feature
pull request merged into master branch

Possible duplicate of [When do you use git rebase instead of git merge?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/804115/when-do-you-use-git-rebase-instead-of-git-merge) — phd, Mar 27 '18 at 17:29

Carlos Henrique · Answer 1 · 2018-03-27T16:52:02.877

The main benefit of rebase is that it starts a much "cleaner" approach.

First, it eliminates unnecessary merge, which is required by git merge.

Secondly, rebasing also results in a perfectly linear project history where you can track the start of the entire project path, without any problems. This makes it easier to navigate your project with commands like git log, git bisect and gitk.

But there are two compromise solutions to this story:

Security and traceability: if you do not follow the golden rule of rebasing, re- writing project history can be potentially catastrophic for your collaborative workflow. And, less importantly, rebasing loses the context provided by a merge commit, if you can not see when the upstream changes have been incorporated into the resource.

The best way to understand the whole process is to read the following article:

Merging vs Rebasing

Also I leave here images that summarize a good example of application:

Repository Initial State

Dev-B: Origin Synchronization

Dev-B: rebase

Dev-B: final rebase

Dev-B: Final Sync to Source

Schleis · Answer 2 · 2018-03-27T16:39:08.927

In your workflow the big difference would be when there is a new commit on develop. In which case if you use merge instead of rebase, you will get a commit stating merging branch develop. This is from git combining the changes from your local branch with what is on develop.

When you rebase, git takes your local commits and sets them aside. Then it brings the changes from develop and adds them to your branch. After this is done, it re-applies your commits one at a time.

I prefer rebase because it keeps the history clean on my branch. In general, there is no functional difference between the two. As any conflicts that happen will either be resolved when you merge or when the commit is applied.