Alex Henrie [off-list ref] writes:

On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 3:46 PM Felipe Contreras
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

This patch leaves everything in place to enable this new mode, but it
only gets enabled if the user specifically configures it;

  pull.rebase = ff-only.

Why not use the existing pull.ff=only option instead of adding a new one?

If you have pull.rebase=false, "git -c pull.ff=only pull" would fail
as desired upon a non-fast-forward.  But if you have
pull.rebase=true, does it fail the same way (not a rhetorical
question; I didn't try)?  If so, I agree we do not need a new one.

Otherwise, I am on two minds.

Having just a single variable would be easier to manage, so
pull.rebase=ff-only that is equivalent to pull.ff=only might be
claimed to be UI improvement.

On the other hand, it looks quite funny for that single variable
that controls the way how pull works, whether rebase or merge is
used, is pull.REBASE.