You can even make it always the default by setting branch.<name>.rebase to true, and can make /that/ the default by setting branch.autosetuprebase to always ;P.

What about "ship"?

Meanwhile, has `git pull` had a `--rebase` since the dawn of Git time in 2005, or did it appear at one point?

git pull --rebase was added in 1.5.4, released in February 2008 (http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/GIT_1.5.4_An_Unusually_Long_Cycl...).