Rebasing Branches - Git Recipes - page 244

The main drawback of the above solution is that here you have to know which revi-
sions you want to reapply. The command $ git format-patch takes this burden
off of your shoulders! Also $ git cherry-pick doesn't create patches. To email
patches you will have to generate them with the $ git format-patch command.
Hint The main reason behind Recipe 7-2 is to provide you with deeper understand-
ing how $ git rebase works. Do not rebase your branches using $ git
format-patch , $ git am , or $ git cherry-pick unless you want to email
patches to someone else. Use the $ git rebase command instead. The analysis in-
cluded in Recipe 7-2 will help you to understand the internals of rebasing. Depending
on your workflow, rebasing may be necessary every time you want to publish your
work.
7-3. Joining divergent branches into lin-
ear history
Problem
You work in a repository with two divergent branches named master and feature ,
as shown in Figure 7-7(a) . You want to merge the feature branch into the master
branch in such a way that the resulting history is linear, that is, it doesn't contain merge
commits. The starting point for this recipe is shown in Figure 7-7(a) . The repository
you want to obtain is presented in Figure 7-7(b) .