It is always better to rebase local commits while pulling remote published changes. git merge will create a merge entry in the history, rebase is preferred because it orders your local commit on top of the latest remote commits.

To avoid typing --rebase whenever you pull you can config git to use it as default:

git config --global pull.rebase true

The equivalent .gitconfig is:

# This is Git's per-user configuration file.
[pull]
	rebase = true

References

• https://sdqweb.ipd.kit.edu/wiki/Git_pull_–rebase_vs._–merge

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