Why does git merge have so much trouble with Fedora package branches?

[Kevin Kofler]

Simo Sorce wrote:
> No, if the branches are identical then by all means keep them aligned.
> But once they diverge, do not try anymore, at that point merges will
> just mess up the history with no gain whatsoever.

But if the branches didn't actually diverge, but got different history for 
some reason, the way to make them fast-forwardable again (and thus not 
requiring any more merge commits) is to first merge branch A into branch B 
as you normally would (generating one last merge commit), then merge branch 
B back into branch A (which will fast-forward to that merge commit and make 
them point to the same hash again).

(I didn't come up with that particular trick; it was brought up by one or 
more people as a solution to create fast-forward-mergeable branches after 
the CVS→git conversion.)

        Kevin Kofler