Question

I know of some people who use git pull --rebase by default and others who insist never to use it. I believe I understand the difference between merging and rebasing, but I’m trying to put this in the context of git pull. Is it just about not wanting to see lots of merge commit messages, or are there other issues?

Answer 1

You should use git pull --rebase when

• your changes do not deserve a separate branch

Indeed — why not then? It’s more clear, and doesn’t impose a logical grouping on your commits.

---

Ok, I suppose it needs some clarification. In Git, as you probably know, you’re encouraged to branch and merge. Your local branch, into which you pull changes, and remote branch are, actually, different branches, and git pull is about merging them. It’s reasonable, since you push not very often and usually accumulate a number of changes before they constitute a completed feature.

However, sometimes–by whatever reason–you think that it would actually be better if these two–remote and local–were one branch. Like in SVN. It is here where git pull --rebase comes into play. You no longer merge–you actually commit on top of the remote branch. That’s what it actually is about.

Whether it’s dangerous or not is the question of whether you are treating local and remote branch as one inseparable thing. Sometimes it’s reasonable (when your changes are small, or if you’re at the beginning of a robust development, when important changes are brought in by small commits). Sometimes it’s not (when you’d normally create another branch, but you were too lazy to do that). But that’s a different question.