How do I resolve merge conflicts when rebasing a branch that already contains merge commits?

[augustbreay]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Issues

Body

We're using a rebase-based workflow (no merge commits), but a developer accidentally merged main into their feature branch, creating a merge commit. Now when I try to rebase their branch onto main, Git keeps asking me to resolve the same conflicts multiple times—once for the merge commit, then again for subsequent commits that modified the same files.

$ git rebase main
# Resolve conflicts in file.js
$ git add file.js
$ git rebase --continue
# Same conflicts in file.js again in the next commit

I could force-push a clean history, but I want to understand the proper way to handle this. How do you cleanly handle merge commits in a rebase workflow?

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[vireakech6724]

cool

[augustdev290]

This happens because git rebase replays each commit linearly, including the merge commit (which is just another commit with two parents). When Git replays the merge commit, it has to re-merge the branches, which causes the conflict again.

Solution 1: Remove the merge commit (cleanest)

# Option A: Squash the merge commit away
git rebase -i main
# Mark the merge commit as 'squash' or 'd' (delete) in the interactive editor
# Git will replay the other commits cleanly

# Option B: Cherry-pick individual commits
git rebase --abort  # Stop the current rebase
git reset --hard HEAD  # Go back to original state
git log --oneline  # Find the commits you want
git checkout -b clean-feature
git cherry-pick <commit1> <commit2> <commit3>
# Now rebase this new branch

Solution 2: Preserve the merge with --rebase=merges

git rebase --rebase=merges main
# This tells Git to recreate merge commits instead of flattening them
# Conflicts still happen once per commit, but merges are preserved

Solution 3: Convert merge to rebase retroactively

git rebase --onto main <merge-commit-parent> HEAD
# Rebase everything after the merge onto main

Best practice: In a rebase workflow, prefer git pull --rebase instead of regular merges. Educate the team: merge commits are for integration branches (main/develop), not feature branches.

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