One step further which is in-scope-of-the-tool spirit will be git clone locally your repository.

And still one step further, just create a new branch to deal with the rebase/merge.

Yes there are may UX pain points in using git, but it also has the great benefits of extremely cheap and fast branching to experiment.

in my experience some of the trickiest situations are around gitignore file updates, crlf conversion, case [in]sentivity, etc. where clones and branches are less useful as a testing ground.