With git/github I really only pull and push. I don't really use any of the other features. Same for the kids on my robotics team. The only thing I have taught them is pull and push. The kids do a pull at the beginning of practice and a push at the end. Yet sometimes I see this in the commit logs. Why are these merges happening? Even I have some merges and I know I didn't do anything differently. Should I be concerned? We are doing all of our git/gihub work in VS code if that matters.
It is for a middle school robotics team (FIRST Lego League if you have ever heard of it). No, I don't have some burning desire to get rid of the merges. I was mostly woried that we were doing something wrong. We definitely do not have any branches. We really just use github to have a safe place to store our code and so that all of the laptops can have all of the code from all of the teammates.
For sure I don't want to add any complexity. I think that since from their end it looks like it is doing exactly what they think it does (i.e., I upload my code with a push, and I get everyone else's code with a pull), there's definitely no need to fix a non-problem.
Yeah, you’re good!