[prophetjohn]

This is not correct. What you're describing is two different styles of merging: fast-forward and no fast-forward, as indicated by the `--no-ff` and `--ff-only` flags provided to `git-merge`

`git-rebase` will rewrite the history of the current branch. In this case, github will rewrite the history of the branch that you would like to merge such that the base commit (hence the name "rebase") or the commit that was branched off of is the latest commit on the default branch (usually master)

Then when you merge it, you'll get a merge commit or not depending on whether or not you do a fast-forward merge