Merge Commits Are Just Noise

Run git log --graph on most team projects and you’ll see the problem. Parallel lines everywhere, merge commits that just say “Merge branch ‘feature/x’ into develop”. None of it useful. It’s noise. I’ve been using a rebase-based workflow for years to avoid this. The history stays linear and the diffs stay readable. This post covers both the argument and the specific branch structure I use for team feature work. I use Git Fork as my day-to-day git GUI, so some of this is written from that perspective, but the concepts and CLI equivalents apply whichever git client you use. Why rebasing over merging The standard objection to rebasing is that it rewrites history. What it actually discards is the record of when you synced with main, which is rarely useful information to future readers. The commit messages still say what changed and why, and those stay intact. You get a linear history. The same project with a rebase workflow reads like a changelog. git bisect works properly. Binary…