YouTip

Introduction

Rebase and cherry-pick are advanced Git operations for rewriting and selectively applying commits. They help maintain a clean project history.

Interactive Rebase

# Rebase last 3 commits
git rebase -i HEAD~3

# In the editor:
# pick = keep commit
# squash = combine with previous
# reword = edit message
# drop = remove commit

# Continue after resolving conflicts
git rebase --continue

# Abort rebase
git rebase --abort

Rebase vs Merge

# Merge creates a merge commit
git checkout main
git merge feature

# Rebase replays commits on top
git checkout feature
git rebase main
git checkout main
git merge feature

Cherry-pick

# Apply a specific commit to current branch
git cherry-pick abc123

# Cherry-pick multiple commits
git cherry-pick abc123 def456

# Cherry-pick without committing
git cherry-pick --no-commit abc123

Summary

Rebase creates linear history by replaying commits. Cherry-pick applies specific commits. Use rebase for cleaning up before merging and cherry-pick for hotfixes.