You've been working locally for awhile. You're ready to push some changes, but someone else pushed something! You have to pull in their changes before you can push yours.
git pull origin master
forces you to create a merge commit, which is annoying.
Instead, do git pull --rebase origin master
. This will effectively:
- Stash your changes
- Pull in the changes from origin
- Apply your changes on top
No merge commit!