Merge vs. Rebase: The Git Decision That Protects Your Shared Code

Merge and rebase are fundamentally different approaches to integrating changes: merge preserves the true history of parallel development with a merge commit, while rebase rewrites history by replaying commits on a clean linear path. Understanding this distinction is critical for teams, as rewriting shared history can corrupt a branch, while the right strategy—rebasing local work before merging to main—maintains both code integrity and clarity.