This isn&#x27;t about rebasing, it is about fast forwarding: this author tells you to turn off that feature manually... &quot;an alternative would be to leave out &quot;--no-ff&quot;, which would allow Git to do a fast-forward instead of a merge, in which case it may not be as clear which of the commits actually belonged to your topic branch&quot;. FWIW: I am with you... but I also think the concept of &quot;topic branches&quot; is not only high friction but kind of silly.