It looks like your troubles came purely from not understanding the concept of fast-forward merges. I completely agree with you that the documentation does not m

It looks like your troubles came purely from not understanding the concept of fast-forward merges. I completely agree with you that the documentation does not make this as clear as it ought to. However, the standard book on git (Pro Git, available free online) covers this (and most other git concepts) very well. This is simply a case of not understanding your tools (which you did acknowledge in the post). This is a widespread and deeply problematic situation, not just for version control systems but for almost all software, and it seems to only be getting worse. Takeaway lesson isn't that there's anything wrong with git, but rather that there's something wrong with an industry that seems to think we should be able to use tools without first learning how they work.