[taeric]

There is no magic to avoid this problem. If you are trying to get changes into a repository that is constantly changing with no good isolation of concerns, then expect pain.

Otherwise, merges really are better from most perspectives. I can trust people doing pull requests to have tested their code. Looking at the log, I can get an idea of whether or not their code was tested with someone elses. Something I can not do with a pure "rebase and push" mentality.