I have come to actually like the two permanent branches approach. I know that for any repository that follows this model that: * "master" is the current stable

I have come to actually like the two permanent branches approach. I know that for any repository that follows this model that: * "master" is the current stable release * "develop" is the current "mostly stable" development version The first time you clone a repository this is an extremely helpful convention to quickly get your head around the state of things. If you're doing it right (and don't use --no-ff, which I agree is unreasonable), I can't think of a scenario where this causes extra merge commits. Merges to master should always be fast forward merges.