Pull Request Merge Strategies

A reference of supported branch merge strategies, commit preservation rules, and recommended use cases for repository maintainers.

Supported Merge Methods

Select the appropriate merge method based on branch lifetime and commit history requirements:

Strategy	Commit History Impact	Recommended Use Case
Create a Merge Commit	Preserves all individual branch commits and appends an explicit merge commit.	Feature branches requiring complete historical traceability during audits.
Squash and Merge	Combines all branch commits into a single unified commit on the target branch.	Documentation edits, minor bug fixes, or long-running PRs with noisy histories.
Rebase and Merge	Reapplies individual commits onto the target branch sequentially without a merge commit.	Linear repository histories where clean individual commit tracking is required.