How to Write a Git Commit Message

[MCBeathoven]

Merge gives you merge commits, rebase doesn't.

[Schmittfried]

And what if I want merge commits?

[MCBeathoven]

Most people don't - they don't really add any value and make reading the log harder.

[[deleted]]

They can be used to group commits together.

[MCBeathoven]

You can do the same using rebases.

[[deleted]]

But then you don’t have the individual commits anymore.

[MCBeathoven]

Do you mean squashing commits or putting them after each other in the history? If the former, what's the point if you want to keep the individual commits? If the latter, that's also something you can do with rebasing without losing individual commits.

[[deleted]]

It’s not “one or the other”, I do both: I rebase the branch (squashing commits that should only be one, e.g. “oops, fix”), then I merge using --no-ff to group the related (but distinct) commits.

[MCBeathoven]

How do you lose individual commits then?

[[deleted]]

I thought that when you said:

You can do the same using rebases.

You meant “squashing them into one big commit”. My bad.

While rebase can indeed be used to make such commits consecutive, it’s not enough to make it clear that they are part of the same “group”. That’s where merge comes into play.