As a developer, you've likely used Git and GitHub, mastering the essentials of version control. Integrating changes from your branches into the main branch, often through pull requests, is a common task. The default choice for many is the "merge" feature.

However, the world of version control offers alternative commands with distinct features. Enter Git rebase and Git squash, two advanced techniques that offer you a different way of synchronizing your changes to the target branch.

Many developer do not even know what these commands are and just use the merge command. While merge is a solid choice if you're interested on learning the other ways you will probably love this article.

In the upcoming sections, we will dive into the commands for Merge, Rebase, and Squash. It's crucial to note that these commands aren't similar to algorithms, solving distinct tasks. Instead, Merge, Rebase, and Squash serve the same fundamental purpose but provide different perspectives on how you manage your branches. Each command offers a unique lens through which you can navigate and enhance your branch management, providing versatility in your approach to version control.

Git Merge

Git Merge is the most commonly used way of updating branches. It's the most common because it's usually the first synchronizing command developers learn when learning Git. They usually don't dive deep into other commands like rebase and squash without learning about merge since they might be overwhelming.

Merge basically creates a new merge commit and combines the changes in the branch to the target branch with that merge commit. It shows your individual commits and a merge commit.

Positives

• Easy to understand how it works
• Has the commit history of both branches

Negatives

• History can be overwhelming and complex
• Possibility of filling the branch history with too many merge commits

Git Rebase

Git rebase is another commonly used command. Rebase command as it's name suggest rebases the head of current branch to target branches last commit. Thus producing a much linear git history. Some people might prefer this kind of more linear Git history.

Positives

• Produces linear commit history
• Outputs a cleaner project history with no merge commits

Negatives

• Rebasing alters the commit history, potentially causing confusion or conflicts for collaborators.
• Solving rebase conflicts are usually harder than solving merge conflicts

Git Squash

The final command is Git Squash. As it's name suggests it squeezes the commits into a single commit and then merged into target branch. It's kind of has both the features of Merge and Rebase. It creates a merge commit but it also keeps the projects history linear and clean.
But the catch of Git Squash is that we lose the details of individual commits. So a lot of context about individual commits are lost in order to have a cleaner project history.

Positives

• Produces linear and clean commit history
• Creates a merge commit

Negatives

• Less detailed commits when squash and merged
• Tracking individual commits might be hard and can cause issues in debuging

Conclusion

In the end all three commands do the same thing but in their own different style. Even though you might not be using all of these commands right now it might be useful to learn how they work for future opportunities or for your personal project management.

So long story short

• Merge: Creates a merge commit, gives all the info about the branch
• Rebase: Moves the head of the current branch to the last node of the target branch and produces a more linear git history
• Squash: Making all the commits into a one single commit and creates a clean linear history but does not provide as much information about commits.

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