git pull --rebase

Question

Start situation (no unpushed changes, > indicates the current branch):

o C [> master][origin/master]
|
o B
|
o A
|
...

After

Answer 1

git pull --rebase is NOT the same as git fetch; git rebase. Unfortunately the git-pull man page is rather cryptic about the difference:

   --rebase
       Rebase the current branch on top of the upstream branch
       after fetching. If there is a remote-tracking branch
       corresponding to the upstream branch and the upstream branch
       was rebased since last fetched, the rebase uses that
       information to avoid rebasing non-local changes.

It turns out that the difference doesn't involve git reset as the original poster guessed - in fact it involves the reflog (see here if you haven't encountered that term before).

For the complete story around the extra magic in git pull --rebase, see this answer:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/11531502/179332