Merge vs Rebase: Choosing the Right Git Strategy for Your Project

Merge Branches

When merging branches, git merge creates a new merge commit that preserves the full history of both branches, resulting in a complete log but a potentially tangled graph.

The following commands illustrate a typical merge workflow:

git checkout main
git pull origin main
git merge dev
# resolve conflicts if any
git commit -m "Merge dev into main"
git push origin main

Rebase Branches

git rebase

reapplies commits from one branch onto another, rewriting history to produce a linear, clean log without extra merge commits.

A typical rebase workflow looks like this:

git checkout dev
git pull origin dev
git rebase main
# resolve conflicts if any
git rebase --continue
git push origin dev --force

Squash Commits

During a rebase you can squash multiple commits into a single one using git rebase -i HEAD~3, changing pick to squash in the interactive editor, then push the result with force.

git checkout dev
git rebase -i HEAD~3
# edit pick to squash, save and close editor
# edit commit message, save
git push origin dev --force

Choosing the Right Method

Use merge if you want to retain the complete branch history and don’t mind extra merge commits, which is useful for collaborative team projects.

Use rebase if you prefer a clean, linear history, which is ideal for projects that value a tidy commit log.

Some organizations enforce rebase only for single‑branch development, while others prefer merge for multi‑branch, multi‑version maintenance.