What are the pros and cons of rebasing vs merging?

Aspect Merging Rebasing

History Keeps all commits, including merge

commits

Creates a linear, cleaner history

Safety Safe for shared/public branches Risky for shared branches (rewrites

history)

Use

Case

When collaboration is ongoing When you want a clean, linear history

before merging

Real-world example:

Before merging a feature into main, many teams rebase it to make the commit history

cleaner. But during teamwork, merging is safer because it doesn’t rewrite other people’s

work.