Re: cookbook question

I presume that origin/common contains changes to the common part of
the config files that you want to apply to both machines. If the two
machines' configs were originally branched from origin/common and then
had there custom changes made and committed, you should just be able
to merge subsequent changes from origin/common and not get conflicts
unless there are genuinely changes to the parts of the configs that
have been modified for the individual machines. I don't see a case for
rebase in your example.

  

The rebase just avoids unnecessary merge records.  What I really want is 
my changes placed on top of whatever the common head is at any one time, 
which by design means I would use rebase.  Aside from the cleanliness of 
the history, I'm not sure there is a real reason to do this.  But I like 
things clean. ;-)

Kyle