[lomnakkus]

> See, and maybe this is because I'm just dumb or something, but I have never gotten rebasing to work for me. Ever. Every single time I do it I read at east 3 articles about it so I don't screw something up, I attempt to do it and ultimately I lose a bunch of work.

Rebase takes a little bit of practice, but everyone who's using git owes it to themselves to learn it by heart. It's almost like having superpowers compared to any VCS which doesn't have rebase.

My advice[1] would be to simply create some dummy repository (perhaps just copy an existing repository with some real code) and going through various scenarios described in the git-rebase man page (using some trivial changes). If something blows up, don't worry, you can always just start from scratch.

The key to making rebase work for you is: 1) understanding the underlying model of git[2], and 2) practice, practice, practice. With enough practice you'll get a good feeling for which "type" of rebase works best in a given situation.

[1] In addition to the excellent advice given by others in this thread.

[2] It may look like it's really all based on snapshots of files, but the workflows are definitely mostly centered around patch-based thinking.