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Discussion on: I'm a Git Master, Ask Me Anything

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Stephen Holdaway • Edited

I'd add to Jason's answer that git rebase is far more than an alternative workflow to merge. I use it heavily during local development for example, before and during merge/pull requests:

  • Updating your in-progress branch to include changes someone else has merged that you need (this is the classic example)

  • Moving your work to be based on a different branch (eg. you originally branched from master as a hotfix, but part-way through you've found it makes more sense to fix with the changes already on develop to avoid additional changes when merging).

  • Separating commits from a branch into multiple branches that make more sense for review. I often do this if I find a bug while writing a tests for existing code - commit a fix on the tests branch, then move the fix commit(s) to a separate branch once everything is done to submit them separately to the test changes. You can also do this with other people's commits and the authorship is not modified.

  • Changing the order of commits, dropping, squashing and combining commits (ie. fixup)

  • Amending a commit on my local branch that's not the last commit (rewording, adding/removing changes, etc).