How to avoid merge commits from Git pull when pushing to remote

Question

I have a repository and some local changes to commit. Before committing, I pulled the changes onto my local using Egit in Eclipse.

It creates a merge commit and I submit

Answer 1

Use rebase option whenever you pull from remote repository. Please follow the below steps,

1. Commit your changes - It will create a new commit in your local.
2. Now do git pull --rebase .
3. Basically the rebase take out your commits that you committed on the current branch HEAD as a patch. Then it will apply all the remote commits on top of HEAD and then applies your commits on top of it.
4. So best practice is to commit changes then pull remote commits by using rebase option.