[Blackthorn]

> Merging is for keeping track of a group of commits that has been taken from a feature branch and included in the mainline.

Merging is for bringing a group of commits from branch A into branch B. It is, quite literally, the original way to perform this operation. It's not "clutter", it's a correct picture of how the code was developed.

[aulin]

It's clutter because it adds no information value on a short lived branch. If it's a branch that periodically syncs with another it's ok, if you're just basing off current master for a feature branch rebase is the way to go.

[Blackthorn]

I've developed branches against a moving target all the time where the moving target introduced a problem in my code that wouldn't have been found by a simple merge conflict resolution. It's much much easier to find the source of the problem when you have the real history (a merge) instead of a rewritten history (a rebase).

[aulin]

You are right, makes sense.