“Understand how merge and rebase change history and when each approach is appropriate.”

Git Rebase vs Merge

Both merge and rebase integrate work from different Git branches.

A---B---C  main
     \
      D---E  feature

Merge

git switch feature
git merge main

Merge preserves existing histories.

git switch feature
git rebase main

The result becomes:

A---B---C---D'---E'

D' and E' are new commits with different hashes.

Rebasing your own local feature work is usually reasonable.

Be more careful rebasing shared branches.

git add .
git rebase --continue

To cancel:

git rebase --abort

Warning

Do not use git push --force casually.

Merge emphasizes preserving branch history. Rebase can produce a simpler linear history.