On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 07:44, David Bremner <david@tethera.net> wrote: > > A third strategy is "git checkout master && git merge -s ours 0.6". > Then history will look like this: > > freeze > --.-------------.----- master > \ / > ----------- > release > > As long as every patch on the release branch is already on master, -s > ours (which throws away all the changes from the side branch) is > reasonable. Remind me of why bugfix patches can't (usually) be applied to the release branch first, then merged into master? When the patch is (accidentally or otherwise) applied to master first, then I think you have no choice but to have it appear twice in the history, once in master and once in release, and using the model you describe above seems the most sensible way to do that.