Git Rebase

What is Git Rebase?

Rebasing moves or combines a sequence of commits to a new base commit.

It is often used to keep a clean, linear project history.

Rebasing can make your commit history easier to read by avoiding unnecessary merge commits.

When to Use Git Rebase

Use Git Rebase to:

• Keep a clean, linear project history
• Avoid unnecessary merge commits
• Combine multiple commits into one
• Edit or reorder commits

Basic Rebase

To move your current branch on top of another branch (e.g., update your feature branch with latest main):

git checkout feature-branch
git rebase main

This reapplies your feature branch changes on top of the latest main branch.

Interactive Rebase

git rebase -i <base> lets you edit, reorder, squash, or fix up commits before a certain point.

This is useful for cleaning up your commit history before sharing it with others.

git rebase -i HEAD~3

This opens an editor where you can:

• pick: keep the commit as is
• squash: combine commits together
• edit: pause to change a commit
• reword: change just the commit message

Follow these steps:

1. Edit the commit message or choose an action (pick, squash, edit, reword)
2. Save and close the editor
3. Git will apply the changes and let you review the results

Continue, Abort, or Skip

If you hit a conflict or need to finish editing a commit, use git rebase --continue after resolving the issue.

This tells Git to keep going with the rebase process.

git add fixed_file.txt
git rebase --continue

If something goes wrong or you want to stop the rebase, use git rebase --abort.

This will put your branch back to how it was before you started rebasing.

git rebase --abort

If you can't fix a commit during a rebase (for example, if a conflict can't be resolved), you can skip it with git rebase --skip.

Git will leave out that commit and move on to the next one.

git rebase --skip

Review Changes

After completing the rebase, review your changes to ensure everything is correct.

Tips & Best Practices

Rebasing rewrites commit history.

Avoid rebasing commits that you have already pushed to a shared repository.

Use git rebase -i to edit, reorder, squash, or fix up commits before a certain point.

Use git rebase --continue to continue a rebase after resolving conflicts.

Use git rebase --abort to cancel a rebase in progress.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter conflicts during a rebase, resolve them and then use git rebase --continue to continue the rebase process.

If you can't fix a commit during a rebase, use git rebase --skip to skip it.