Unlike merge, that squashes all the commits into one merge commit, rebase preserves the original commits. After the rebase, commits structure is in the single line.
This is the example of the situation before the rebase:
If we want to integrate changes from branch-B into branch-A, we will use the following command:
git rebase branch-B
First, Git will temporary remove all changes on branch-A that happened after common ancestor commit(C1):
Next, all the commits from branch-B are applied:
In the final step, commits from branch-A that were temporary removed are now replayed. But they will be in new position, on top of the integrated commits from branch-B. This is the resulting structure:
Resources: