Only You Can Prevent git Merge Commits
I love using Git, but when my repositories turn into a tangle of merge commits, I start to get a little frustrated. Here’s my solution. Go into your repo’s .git/config file and make sure it has something like the following:
[branch "master"]
remote = origin
merge = refs/heads/master
rebase = true
Now, when you run git pull, it’ll rebase your local commits on top of the newly pulled-down commits instead of trying to merge them. Even better, try putting this in your global ~/.gitconfig file:
[branch]
autosetuprebase = always
With this change, all tracked branches from then on will be set up to rebase instead of merge.