title: Updating a local fork without pushing merge commits?
body: <p>I seem to be having some issues with merge commits crowding my pull requests that I don't mean to be pushed. Currently I have a local fork with an upstream set to the base repository, and I update my repository like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git fetch upstream
  git merge upstream/n3960  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>where <code>n3960</code> is my branch I am working on, the problem is when I push commits to my fork, I get all of these <code>Merge remote-tracking branch 'upstream/master' into n3960</code> commits from when I updated my branch whenever another member pushes to the base repo, how can I avoid having all of these merge commits in my pull requests?</p>
  
  <p>An example: <a href="https://github.com/STEllAR-GROUP/hpx/pull/1145" rel="nofollow">my recent pull request</a> is crowded with these <code>Merge remote-tracking branch 'upstream/master' into n3960</code> commits, I want to try and avoid having these overcrowd my <strong>actual</strong> commits!</p>