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

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

Hello Matthias,

Matthias Baumgarten wrote:
> 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