RE: pull.rebase config vs. --ff-only on command line

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 16, 2021, 16:39 UTC
Message-ID: <60f1b62c7531c_ade9208d8@natae.notmuch>
In-Reply-To: <c62933fb-96b2-99f5-7169-372f486f6e39@aixigo.com>

Hello Matthias,

Matthias Baumgarten wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> this is my first time contacting you guys and girls so I hope this mail 
> achieves the expected standard. I've discovered the following behaviour 
> of git:
> 
> If pull.rebase is configured to true and git pull --ff-only is executed 
> it seems like the config wins, i.e. issuing "Successfully rebased and 
> updated refs/heads/...", which is not what I would expect. I always 
> believed that command line options would overwrite configured options.
> 
> Is my assumption that command line options always win wrong or is this a 
> bug?

Yes, your assumption is correct, but the equivalent of that combination is:

  git pull --rebase --ff-only

But --ff-only is only meant for the merge mode of `git pull` (git pull --merge), not the rebase mode, so it's ignored. You can see that from the documentation [1]:

  With --ff-only, resolve the merge as a fast-forward when possible.
  When not possible, refuse to merge and exit with a non-zero status.

Note the *merge* part.

[1] https://git-scm.com/docs/git-pull

-- 
Felipe Contreras