Rebase Git | Everything and Beyond

The 'git rebase' command in Git allows you to seamlessly incorporate changes from one branch to another, streamlining your development workflow and ensuring a clean, organized commit history.

Updated: 29 Jun, 23 by Susith Nonis 7 Min

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The main reason for rebasing is to preserve the history of the projects. For many, rebase would be one of the functions of Git, which the users have been working without using for a long time, even without regret.

After someone introduced it to me, and once I tried to learn it, I felt that I deprived myself and my project of having a neat and excellent history, and I started squashing commits and putting `--rebase' at the end from the pull. Hence, this document contains an in-depth discussion of the git rebase command.

Also, the Rebase command on setting up a repository and rewriting the page history has been reviewed. This article takes a more detailed look at configuring and running the git-rebase. Common Rebase uses, and problems will be covered here.

From the main branch and using rebase instead of merge to the extent that it does not lead to strange conflicts, sometimes when there is a problem, I would go back to the same merge system as before, and there was almost no problem. The main one started from where I used rebase for the rest of the team because of the date problem on the main branch. 

Many times we encountered a problem in this way that the staff wanted to press on the feature of their branch and got this message:

error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/...' 

Hint: Updates were rejected because the remote contains work that you do hint: not have locally. This is usually caused by another repository pushing 

A hint to the same reference: You may want to integrate the remote changes first. 

Hint: (e.g., 'git pull ...') before pushing again.

While no one but them was working on that branch and should not cause such a problem. After this, I tried to learn the concept of rebase correctly to understand the cause of the problem. The general thing that caught me was this____.

When we do, Git takes the commits of the branch that we rebase with and places them behind our branch commits (from where our branch is separated) and puts our commits at the end of it. There is no problem so far, the only point is that our commits placed in it are completely the same as the previous commits in terms of messages and descriptions, but they have different keys. That is, when we push again on our own branch, there are different commits on the remote; therefore, it is impossible to push without forcing.

Rebase is one of two Git applications specialising in integrating changes from one branch to another. Another application of change integration is git merge. Merge is always a change record that moves forward. On the other hand, rebase has powerful features for rewriting history. See the Merging vs Rebasing guide for a detailed review of Merge vs Rebasing. Rebase has two main modes: "manual" and "interactive". We will explore the different Rebase modes in more detail below.

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Rebasing Process or combining the sequence of commits into a new basic commit. Using different parts of the feature (attribute) is useful and easy to see. The general process can be visualized as follows:

More explicitly, Git is a tool that programmers (and many others, such as graphic designers, etc.) use to control software versions and teamwork. Anyone who learns the beginning of simple commands such as "push" and "pull" and their use. 

But Git is one of those tools that has no depth and there is no way to learn it deeply except by experimenting. The positive thing is that there is no risk if you are very careful, and you must test whenever you want.

Regarding content, a rebase changes your branch from one commit to another, making it look like you created your branch from another. Git does this by creating new commits, using items on a specified basis. 

  • The branch is the same; the commits are completely new.

Below we have listed situations regarding going through Git:

  • When we don't push the branch we are working on yet, and we want to update it with other people's work. With this work, we get rid of the additional commits on the history that are created due to dragging the work of others;
  • If you close the branch and make sure that branch has not been merged on any branch on the remote, we can rebase again, but we must be aware that because the commit sha is different, force push must be done; otherwise, we will fail with the same error;
  • If there is a branch on the remote and it is merged into other branches, we should never rebase.
  • Rebase should not be done on branches that different people use;
  • By using rebase instead, you can have a cleaner history, and using it badly will waste time and even make the history dirty and unreadable.

The commit created after rebase almost the same as the previous one!

As described on the rewrite history page, rebase can change old commits, multiple commits, committed messages, and multiple messages. While these are the most common, git rebase has other command options that will be useful in more complex applications.

git rebase -- d

During playback, the commit will be removed from the final merged commit block.

git rebase – p

It is committed as it is. It does not modify the message or content of the commit and is still a unique commit in the branch history.

git rebase -- x

During playback, Shell Script executes the command line on each specified commit. A useful example is to run your codebase test suite on a specific commit, which may help identify regressions during a rebase.

Interactive Rebase gives you complete control over your project history. This gives developers much freedom, allowing them to go back and clean up a "messy" commit history while they're focused on writing code.

Most developers like to use a cleanup rebase before merging a feature branch into the main database. This allows them to weed out trivial commits, remove obsolete commits, and ensure everything is in order before committing to the "official" project history. To others, it appears that the entire feature was created in a series of scheduled commits.

The true power of corporate rebase can be seen in the history of the master branch. To others, it sounds like you're a brilliant developer who first implemented a new feature with a great amount of commitment. This is how rebase command can keep the history of a project clean and meaningful.

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Susith Nonis

Susith Nonis

I'm fascinated by the IT world and how the 1's and 0's work. While I venture into the world of Technology, I try to share what I know in the simplest way with you. Not a fan of coffee, a travel addict, and a self-accredited 'master chef'.