Use rebase-and-merge instead of merge

[rht]

There are lots of merge commits in the commit history. Moving forward, this can be cleaned if the rebase-and-merge is selected as the default in the GitHub settings of this repo. See https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/configuring-branches-and-merges-in-your-repository/configuring-pull-request-merges/about-merge-methods-on-github#rebasing-and-merging-your-commits. Example of projects with clean commit history: https://github.com/zulip/zulip/commits/main.

Notice that the pull request number can still be found in the commit detail even with this method: zulip/zulip@5300ad8.

[EwoutH]

Agree, Rebase and merge is much cleaner for the commit history.

One disadvantage however is that Rebase and merge does destroy commit signatures.

[rht]

The commit signatures can be retained if the branch is rebased (by the PR creator) on top of latest main, and then the maintainer do a git pull --rebase from the PR branch.

[jackiekazil]

@rht I am confused by settings in your comments.
You are suggesting setting it as the default then also encouraging folks during the the PR Rebase -- on the command line?
Or call all this be set in the settings and am I missing it?

[rht]

You can ignore my comment on the command line rebase. Most people don't sign their commits anyway, so using GH's rebase and merge button should work.

[EwoutH]

On recent commits the reference to the pull request is gone, so the (#PR). This makes it more difficult to find the original pull request. How can this be fixed when merging?

[rht]

If you click on the individual commit, you will see the PR number, e.g. d224397 is #1099.

[rht]

[rht]

I suppose I can close this now, since currently the default is rebase and merge.