What is rebasing

 Let's understand it by example:

Query: I created a feature branch upgrade10.4, from develop 3 months ago and worked on it. On develop, the team was working on sitecore 9.3 specific code. After completing the upgrade work on feature branch now I want to sync all the changes that were going parallelly, on the develop, with upgrade 10.4 to get all the changes of develop on my feature. How can I rebase it?

Solution: ✅ Correct Mental Model (Very Important)

• develop → has latest business changes, but 9.3-specific 

• upgrade10.4 → has upgrade changes, but missing last 3 months of develop work

So the operation is:

Rebase upgrade10.4 onto develop




Query: Doesn't it sounds odd that re base feature branch onto develop, where onto sounds like we are migrating changes from feature to develop.

Solution: This confusion is very common, and you’re right to pause — the wording does sound counter-intuitive at first. The key is that “onto” does NOT mean “into”.

The Precise Meaning of “rebase X onto Y”

Rebase X onto Y means
👉 Take the commits from X and replay them on top of Y

It does NOT mean:

• merging X into Y

• moving changes from X to Y

• modifying Y at all

Only X changes, Y stays untouched.

BEFORE:

A---B---C---D   develop (Sitecore 9.3 work)

        \

          E---F---G   upgrade10.4 (your feature work)




• develop continued with C-D
• upgrade10.4 branched at B and added E-F-G

Command You Run

• git checkout upgrade10.4
• git rebase develop

This literally means:

“Take commits E-F-G and replay them as if they were created after D.”

AFTER REBASING:

A---B---C---D---E'---F'---G'   upgrade10.4

                   ^

          develop (unchanged)

 

Important:

• develop does not move

• upgrade10.4 changes base

• Your commits are copied, not moved

Why the Word “onto” Is Misleading

Natural language suggests:

“Put feature onto develop”

But Git language means:

“Put feature commits on top of develop”

A better mental phrasing is:

“Rebase feature so that it sits on develop”

Rebase does exactly that, but in a clean, linear way:

• You get all develop changes

• Your upgrade commits appear last

• History looks like upgrade happened after latest develop