Merge conflicts can be minimized, if not eliminated, by only merging branches back into develop via a fast-forward merge (and preserving the merge commit with t

Merge conflicts can be minimized, if not eliminated, by only merging branches back into develop via a fast-forward merge (and preserving the merge commit with the no-ff flag for the git merge command). The same thing should apply to merging develop into master. That way, merge conflicts, if any, are limited to merges that involve porting bug fixes back to earlier released versions.