Managing multiple pull requests at the same time

Question

If you have multiple pull requests all based off of the same commit of your master branch (so each pull request was rebased properly before issuing the request), how can you accept and rebase the changes into master while still successfully closing/accepting the pull requests.

        D--E
       /
A--B--C
       \
        F--G

I am trying to keep our master clean and try to avoid merging where possible. The pull request I pull first (fast forward) will close the pull request and keep the commits clean, but with the subsequent one I will have to either rebase (which will not close the pull request), merge the changes, which dirties up the commits (especially when a number of pull requests pile up), or ask the contributors to rebase their branches, but that gets tiresome with a number of developers.

Any better strategies to manage this? I am using Bitbucket as our source repository if it makes a difference, but I would assume this would be the same in GitHub or any other git source control.

Answer 1

On "excessive cleanup syndrome", I recommend the read of http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg39091.html for both the pull submitter as well as the merge maintainer.

It may also be worth noting that excessive "git rebase" will not make things any cleaner: if you do too many rebases, it will just mean that all your old pre-rebase testing is now of dubious value.