Git Interactive Rebase: The Netflix Engineering Approach

At Netflix, engineers handle thousands of deployments daily. Their secret? Mastering Git interactive rebase to maintain pristine commit histories that make debugging and code reviews effortless.

Why Netflix Engineers Swear by Interactive Rebase

Netflix processes over 1 billion hours of video streaming monthly. With such scale, clean Git history isn't just nice-to-have—it's mission-critical. When a bug affects millions of users, engineers need to quickly trace through commit history to identify the root cause.

The Netflix Interactive Rebase Workflow

1. Feature Branch Cleanup

Before merging any feature branch, Netflix engineers use interactive rebase to clean up their commit history:

git rebase -i HEAD~5

2. Squashing Related Commits

Multiple commits for the same feature get squashed into a single, meaningful commit with a descriptive message.

3. Reordering for Logical Flow

Commits are reordered to tell a logical story of feature development, making code reviews more efficient.

Advanced Techniques Used at Scale

Fixup Commits

Netflix engineers use `git commit --fixup` followed by `git rebase -i --autosquash` to automatically organize fixup commits.

Exec Commands

During interactive rebase, they use `exec` commands to run tests at each step, ensuring the rewritten history maintains functionality.

Common Pitfalls and Netflix Solutions

• Merge Conflicts: Netflix engineers resolve conflicts during rebase using a three-way merge strategy
• Lost Commits: They always create backup branches before complex rebases
• Shared Branch Issues: Interactive rebase is only used on private feature branches, never on shared branches

Practice Interactive Rebase Now

Ready to practice these Netflix-level techniques? Try our interactive Git scenarios based on real Netflix engineering challenges.