Your feature branch is several commits behind the main branch. Explain how you would use git rebase to bring your branch up to date with main.

Question

Accepted Answer

Running git rebase main while on a feature branch replays that branch's commits on top of the latest commit on main, bringing the feature branch up to date without creating a merge commit.

Key Points:
• Rebase moves the feature branch's commits one at a time onto the current tip of main, rewriting their commit hashes in the process.
• If a commit conflicts with changes already on main, the rebase pauses so you can resolve that specific conflict before continuing.
• git rebase --continue moves to the next commit once a conflict is resolved, and git rebase --abort cancels the whole operation and restores the branch to its pre-rebase state.
• The result is a clean, linear history, in contrast to merging main into the feature branch, which would add an extra merge commit.
• This should only be done before the feature branch is shared or after coordinating with anyone else working on it, since it rewrites commit hashes.

Example:
A feature branch is five commits behind main; running git rebase main replays those five commits on top of main's latest commit, resolving one small conflict along the way, resulting in a clean, linear history ready for review.

Code Example:
```
git checkout feature-branch
git rebase main
# resolve any conflicts, then
git rebase --continue
```

Interview Tip:
A concise interview answer is:

"I'd check out the feature branch and run git rebase main, which replays my commits on top of main's latest commit instead of creating a merge commit. If a conflict comes up partway through, I resolve it and run git rebase --continue to finish."