How to create a single commit with the differences between the local and remote Git repositories?

Question

In Git, let's say I've been working on a local branch:

  Common ancestor      
        /\
       A  \
      /    X
     B      \
    /        Y
   C       remote
 local

I made local commits A, B and C and in the mean time the remote branch moved on with commits X and Y. So I do a pull and get:

  Common ancestor      
        /\
       A  \
      /    X
     B      \
    /        Y
   C        /remote
    \      /
     \    /
      \  /
       \/
       M
     local

If I now push, the remote history will include all my A, B, C and M commits... but this isn't what I want.

I want to just push a single commit with the differences from my local branch so the remote branch will just look like this with none of the merging complexity:

  Common ancestor      
         \
          \
           X
            \
             Y
              \
               N
             remote

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Do a

git pull --rebase

Which is equivalent to git fetch and a git rebase instead of a git merge.