Sacrosanct? No. But still useful. With a real merge, you get a special commit that summarizes what had to be done to complete the merge. That can come in ha

Sacrosanct? No. But still useful. With a real merge, you get a special commit that summarizes what had to be done to complete the merge. That can come in handy, especially with the sort of bugs that creep in during merges. Rebase will actually change your original commit, which obscures the original intent of the commit and hides the merge. In those cases I'd rather have a slightly messier history but more information about what really happened.