Rebasing in Git is a powerful and often misunderstood tool. While its primary use is to integrate changes from one branch onto another, there are several "unusual" yet highly effective ways to leverage git rebase to clean up your commit history, fix mistakes, and collaborate more smoothly.
This guide explores some of these advanced use cases, focusing on their practical application and best practices.
Rebasing is not recommended in two primary situations: when you are working on a public or shared branch and when the rebase operation would cause a significant loss of historical context.
Does git rebase affect other branches?
Yes, git rebase can affect other branches, but only if you rebase a branch that other developers have already pulled and started working from. Rebasing a local, unshared branch has no impact on other branches in the repository.
The key to understanding this lies in how rebase works. It rewrites the commit history of a branch by moving its commits to a new base. When you run git rebase, you're essentially creating a new set of commits that replace the original ones.