Pull with Rebase

Pull with Rebase When Your Branch Is Out of Date

After this page you can update a local branch from a remote without a merge commit from git pull.

pull is fetch plus integrate

git pull

means git fetch then, by default, a merge of @{u} (the upstream) into HEAD. If both you and the remote moved, you get a merge commit that only exists because you pulled.

 after fetch, both moved

 origin/main   A ← B ← C ← G
 local main    A ← B ← C ← D ← E

 git pull              (merge)     A ← B ← C ← G ← M
                                         D ← E ↗

 git pull --rebase                 A ← B ← C ← G ← D' ← E'

Chapter 2 set:

git config --global pull.ff only

Then git pull fails instead of merging. You choose:

git pull --rebase
# or
git fetch
git rebase @{u}

--rebase copies your local-only commits onto the updated upstream, then fast-forwards your branch name.

When this is the right shape

You committed two fixes on main locally. Someone else pushed to origin/main. git pull --rebase replays your two fixes on top of theirs. History stays linear. Conflicts are per commit (previous page).

When to merge instead

You want a merge commit that records “I integrated upstream at this point.” Feature branches that you share, or main policies that require merge commits, use git pull --no-rebase or an explicit git merge.

Set it for this branch only

git config pull.rebase true          # this repo
git config --global pull.rebase true # every repo (overrides pull.ff only)

This book leaves pull.ff only as the global default so a surprise pull fails closed. Type --rebase when you mean it, until the habit is there.

After a rebase pull

git status
git log --oneline --graph --decorate -12

Your branch is ahead of 'origin/main' by N commits means you still need git push. If you had already pushed the old hashes, you need a force-with-lease (chapter 11).