What is the difference in behavior and usage between git merge and git rebase when integrating changes?

The git merge and git rebase commands are used to integrate changes from one branch into another, but they do so in different ways.

• git merge creates a new merge commit that combines the histories of both branches. The history is preserved as a branch, allowing you to see when and how the merge occurred. This maintains the branching context but can lead to a more complex history.

• git rebase rewrites the commits of the current branch on top of another branch, as if they were created after the latest commits of the target branch. This makes the history more linear and clean but changes commit hashes, which can cause issues when collaborating if the branch has already been published.

Example:

# merge
git checkout feature
git merge main

# rebase
git checkout feature
git rebase main

Use merge if you want to preserve the branch history, and rebase if you want a linear history without merge commits.