Preventing git merge requests when making a git pull

Don't you hate when it happens? You do a git pull and then suddenly you are smacked with this message:

 $ Merge branch 'your-branch' into your-branch  

And it's a commit. It's laying in your history, testifying to some inscrutable mistake you made. "Why am I merging my own branch into the same dang branch?" you ask yourself in bewilderment.

Worse yet, if you do a push, it lives in your branch history forever!

It's actually a pretty simple problem. Basically, the local version of the branch you're working on has diverged from the remote version. You're merging the remote version of your branch in with the local version.

The fix is easy.

  git pull --rebase

What does this do? It rebases the remote branch against your local version. This means it will take your changes and put them aside, then apply all of the remote changes before finally attempting to apply your changes on top. In other words it makes your branch up-to-date before applying your changes.

Do you get file conflicts? No worries! That's expected if you're working on the same files. Simply open up each conflicted file and make the necessary adjustments.