Keeping a branch up to date with rebase

Upstream keeps moving while your pull request is open. To bring your branch up to date, run git fetch upstream, then git rebase upstream/main while on your branch. Rebase replays your commits on top of the latest upstream work.

The result is a straight history with no merge commits, which many projects require. Keeping a fork in sync matters too. Update your fork's main with git switch main, git merge --ff-only upstream/main and git push origin main, or use GitHub's Sync fork button.

Rebase rewrites your commits, creating new copies of them. That is fine on your own feature branch, and wrong on a branch other people build on. Some projects prefer merging main into the branch instead, so follow the contributing guide.