What to choose: merge or rebase in Git? What is the difference and when to use rebase?

Difference between merge and rebase:

• merge combines branches, creating a new merge commit. The history retains all branches and their divergence points.
• rebase moves commits from one branch onto another, rewriting history to make it linear.

When to use rebase:

• To maintain a clean and linear commit history.
• When updating your branch with the latest changes from the main branch before merging.

Example:

# Update feature branch from master using rebase
git checkout feature
git fetch origin
git rebase origin/master

This helps avoid unnecessary merge commits and simplifies history, but requires caution when working with public branches to avoid rewriting shared history.