Always surprising when folks are confused about how to collaborate on git branches... I'd expect the recursive solution to be more obvious!
> The "proper" solution is the one that allows me to get stuff done.
Yeah, but the stuff that needs to get done doesn't end with your commit, it starts there. Merge commits are prone to introduce unexpected and uncaught bugs: rebases just don't.
> Merge commits are prone to introduce unexpected and uncaught bugs: rebases just don't.
How so? If I make an error with a rebase then I risk losing my changes. You can fetch it from the local reflog, but that's not so easy. With a merge I have a merge commit which records what was merged.
> The "proper" solution is the one that allows me to get stuff done.
Yeah, but the stuff that needs to get done doesn't end with your commit, it starts there. Merge commits are prone to introduce unexpected and uncaught bugs: rebases just don't.