[git] Git fast forward VS no fast forward merge

Git merge allow us to perform fast forward and no fast fast forward branch merging. Any ideas when to use fast forward merge and when to use no fast forward merge?

When we work on development environment and merge our code to staging/production branch then Git no fast forward can be a better option. Usually when we work in development branch for a single feature we tend to have multiple commits. Tracking changes with multiple commits can be inconvenient later on. If we merge with staging/production branch using Git no fast forward then it will have only 1 commit. Now anytime we want to revert the feature, just revert that commit. Life is easy.

It is possible also that one may want to have personalized feature branches where code is just placed at the end of day. That permits to track development in finer detail.

I would not want to pollute master development with non-working code, thus doing --no-ff may just be what one is looking for.

As a side note, it may not be necessary to commit working code on a personalized branch, since history can be rewritten git rebase -i and forced on the server as long as nobody else is working on that same branch.

I can give an example commonly seen in project.

Here, option --no-ff (i.e. true merge) creates a new commit with multiple parents, and provides a better history tracking. Otherwise, --ff (i.e. fast-forward merge) is by default.

$ git checkout master
$ git checkout -b newFeature
$ ...
$ git commit -m 'work from day 1'
$ ...
$ git commit -m 'work from day 2'
$ ...
$ git commit -m 'finish the feature'
$ git checkout master
$ git merge --no-ff newFeature -m 'add new feature'
$ git log
// something like below
commit 'add new feature'         // => commit created at merge with proper message
commit 'finish the feature'
commit 'work from day 2'
commit 'work from day 1'
$ gitk                           // => see details with graph

$ git checkout -b anotherFeature        // => create a new branch (*)
$ ...
$ git commit -m 'work from day 3'
$ ...
$ git commit -m 'work from day 4'
$ ...
$ git commit -m 'finish another feature'
$ git checkout master
$ git merge anotherFeature       // --ff is by default, message will be ignored
$ git log
// something like below
commit 'work from day 4'
commit 'work from day 3'
commit 'add new feature'
commit 'finish the feature'
commit ...
$ gitk                           // => see details with graph

(*) Note that here if the newFeature branch is re-used, instead of creating a new branch, git will have to do a --no-ff merge anyway. This means fast forward merge is not always eligible.