Solving Git Pull Origin Warning

How to deal with this git warning? “Pulling without specifying how to reconcile divergent branches is discouraged”

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TLDR;

Either execute any of the following:

• git config --global pull.rebase false or git config pull.rebase false
• git config --global pull.rebase true or git config pull.rebase true
• git config --global pull.ff only or git config pull.ff only

For more references: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-pull

Story

I was updating my local repository and wanted to make sure my repository is up-to-date with the master or main branch. Then got the following warnings:

hint: Pulling without specifying how to reconcile divergent branches is
hint: discouraged. You can squelch this message by running one of the following
hint: commands sometime before your next pull:
hint:
hint: git config pull.rebase false # merge (the default strategy)
hint: git config pull.rebase true # rebase
hint: git config pull.ff only # fast-forward only
hint:
hint: You can replace “git config” with “git config — global” to set a default
hint: preference for all repositories. You can also pass — rebase, — no-rebase,
hint: or — ff-only on the command line to override the configured default per
hint: invocation.

Google is our friend (privacy not included)

So I started searching for what rebase and fast-forward means. So here it is:

• git config pull.rebase false # merge (the default strategy): This keeps the default behavior and suppresses the warning.
• git config pull.rebase true # rebase: This actually commits on top of the remote branch, maintaining a single branch both locally and remotely (unlike the default behaviour where two different branches are involved — one on local and the other on remote — and, to combine the two, a merge is performed).
• git config pull.ff only # fast-forward only: This only performs the pull if the local branch can be fast-forwarded. If not, it simply aborts with an error message (and does not create any commits).

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