Rebasing Practices

About

Rebasing Practices refer to the use of git rebase to reapply commits from one branch onto another. Rebasing rewrites commit history to appear as though changes were made on top of a target branch, resulting in a cleaner, more linear project history. This section covers safe rebase usage, interactive rebasing, and when not to rebase.

Importance

In real-world teams, merge commits can clutter the commit history, making it hard to trace who did what and when. For instance:

• A feature branch that spans weeks of development might include dozens of minor commits. Interactive rebasing lets you squash or reword them before merging into main, making code review and audit easier.

• Rebasing local branches before pushing avoids unnecessary merge commits and reduces conflict risk during pull requests.

• At companies practicing trunk-based development or pull request workflows, rebasing ensures a clean history without sacrificing individual contributions.

Used properly, rebasing enhances code traceability, simplifies debugging, and improves the quality of project history without introducing noise.