How to Use Git Rebase?

Git rebase can integrate the changes from one branch to another by overcoming the problems that we might have faced while using the git merge command. The changes we will do will be recorded in the form of logs which are useful to go through if any mistakes happen.

What is Git Rebase?

Rebasing in Git is a process of integrating a series of commits on top of another base tip. It takes all the commits of a branch and appends them to the commits of a new branch.

Uses of Git Rebase

• The main aim of rebasing is to maintain a progressively straight and cleaner project history. Rebasing gives rise to a perfectly linear project history that can follow the end commit of the feature all the way to the beginning of the project without even forking. This makes it easier to navigate your project.
• You can integrate the feature branch into the main branch in two ways. the first one is by merging directly into a main branch or first rebasing and then merging. The below diagram shows If you rebase the feature branch first it will facilitate a fast-forward merge. Integrating upstream updates into your local repository is frequently done by rebasing. Git merge causes an unnecessary merging to commit each time you want to see how the project has advanced when you pull in upstream modifications.

Some common use cases for git rebase include

• Keeping a clean and linear commit history: Git rebasing is mainly used for maintaining a linear history of commits, where commits are interrelated to the co-existing one. it makes it easy to understand code.
• Updating a feature branch: By rebasing the feature branch will help us to maintain updates because it is generated from the main branch. The main branch will always be up to date.
• Rebasing the feature branch can bring it up to date with the most recent changes in the main branch if it was generated from a main branch (such as master) and the main branch has since been updated with new commits.
• Resolving merge conflicts: Git rebase will help us to resolve merge conflicts. It enables conflicts to be settled at each stage, leading to a cleaner merge, by applying each commit from the branch being rebased separately.

Git Rebase Commands

The following are the most used Git rebase commands:

• git rebase master: The command “git rebase master” can be used to make all modifications found in your master branch part of your current branch.

git rebase master

• git rebase –continue: When we are rebasing the branches we will face some conflicts and issues then we need to resolve the issue. After resolving the issue we again continue the rebasing processes for that we use “git rebase –continue”.

git rebase

• git rebase –abort: “Git rebase –abort” command cancels a rebase that is currently underway and restores the branch to its initial state.

Git rebase –abort

• git rebase –skip: When rebasing the branches we might face some unresolved conflicts to skip the particular encounters we will use “git rebase –skip”. Skipping the commit is not good practice it will damage your codebase.

git rebase –skip

• git rebase -I HEAD~3: With the help of this command, you can interactively rebase the most recent three commits onto the active branch. You can choose which commits to rebase, alter commit messages, and squash or divide commits in the interactive editor that is opened.

git rebase -I HEAD~3

How to use Git Rebase

1. Switch to your main branch with

git checkout main

2. Update your local main branch with following command. This is so we have the latest HEAD of main available for the rebase.

git pull

3. Switch back to your branch new_branch and make commit

git checkout new_branch
touch abc1.txt
git add .
git commit -m "Added abc1.txt"

4. Use git rebase new_branch, this will complete the rebase, replaying your commits on top of the HEAD of main.

git checkout main
git rebase new_branch