git: pull --rebase does not work

[dmik]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Clone a repo from some origin.
2. Commit something to origin.
3. Commit something to your local clone.
4. Run git pull --rebase.

It is expected that git temporarily discards commits from step 3, then pulls all commits from step 2 and then applies commits from step 3 on top of the result. This is all needed to push your local changes w/o creating a special merge commit (which a regular git pull would create) in case if there were remote changes that you don't have (because you didn't do git pull before committing new local stuff).

However, git just says this:

First, rewinding head to replay your work on top of it...

and then exits. And your working repo is left in a state when remote commits are applied but all your local commits are NOT restored on top of them (i.e. they are virtually lost unless you know git internals well enough to get them from your rev-log).

If your local clone is behind origin by several commits and you make a local commit which you want to push