Pull request behavior

[svaraborut]

Has anyone found a workaround to this:

"The rebase and merge behavior on GitHub deviates slightly from git rebase. Rebase and merge on GitHub will always update the committer information and create new commit SHAs, whereas git rebase outside of GitHub does not change the committer information when the rebase happens on top of an ancestor commit. For more information about git rebase, see git-rebase in the Git documentation."

In my last project, this behaviour is a deal breaker for us, as it breaks all the auto-generated tags for canary releases and breaks other links.

Any solution apart from doing it via git and avoiding pull requests?

Do you have any idea why this behavior?

Edit:
To add more context. The issue we are facing is that commits are recreated even when the brench being rebased is a direct anchestor of the default branch.

[AronSoto]

Hey bro! I totally get your frustration with GitHub's "Rebase and Merge" behavior. It can be a headache when it updates committer information and creates new commit SHAs.

Why is this?

I think GitHub enforces this approach to keep metadata consistent across projects. Unlike git rebase, which preserves committer info when rebasing onto an ancestor, GitHub always generates new SHAs. This can be frustrating, but it's designed to avoid ambiguity in commit histories.

Possible Workarounds

1. Rebase Locally and Push

Instead of using GitHub’s UI, you can do the rebase manually:

git checkout feature-branch
git rebase main
git push --force-with-lease

2. Use Fast-Forward Merges

If your project setup allows it, you can use a fast-forward merge to keep history clean:

git checkout main
git merge --ff-only feature-branch

3. Squash and Merge

Not the best for keeping detailed commit history, but if your team is okay with it, "Squash and Merge" combines all commits into one. This might be useful if you're mainly concerned about tracking feature implementations rather than individual changes.

4. GitHub Actions

You could also set up a GitHub Action to handle rebasing automatically before merging:

name: Auto Rebase
on:
  pull_request_target:
    types: [opened, synchronize]
jobs:
  rebase:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Rebase and Push
        run: |
          git config user.name "github-actions[bot]"
          git config user.email "github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com"
          git fetch origin main
          git rebase origin/main
          git push --force-with-lease

This way, your PRs always stay in sync without having to manually rebase them.