Why uses git fast-forward merging per default?

Posted by Florian Pilz on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Florian Pilz
Published on 2010-05-17T15:26:16Z Indexed on 2010/05/17 15:30 UTC
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git

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fast-forward

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merge

Coming from mercurial, I'm using branches to organize features. Naturally I want to see this work-flow in my history as well.

But I started my new project with git and finished a feature. After merging I realized that git used fast-forward and forgot about my branch. So to think into the future: I'm the only one working on this project. If I use the default approach of git (fast-forward merging) my history would result in one giant master branch.

I don't want this and can't see any good reason making this default. Maybe there are reasons, but what's so striking about it, that it has to be the default action?

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