Rebase
A Git operation that reapplies commits onto a different base commit and rewrites their history.
Plain English
Move your branch changes onto a newer starting point such as the latest main branch.
In context
Teams often rebase a working branch before review or integration to incorporate newer changes and keep history relatively linear while resolving any conflicts along the way.
Example
“Rebase your branch on main before opening the pull request.”
When you'll hear this
- branch maintenance
- pull request preparation
- history cleanup
Common misunderstanding
Rebase rewrites commit identities and is different from merging which combines histories without replaying the existing commits.
Also known as
git rebaserebase branch
Commonly used by
Related terms
Often compared with
Updated: 2026-08-28
