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I'm using git-flow through Atlassian's Sourcetree.

When I finish a Release, it merges the release branch to the master branch, and again to the development branch. I have opted always to make a merge-commit, rather than allowing fast-forwarding.

It occurs me somehow that if git-flow were to merge the release branch into the master branch, and then merge the*master* branch into the development branch, the graph might be in some sense 'tidier'.

Are there reasons why this is a bad idea?

Please note that I'm still finding my way with this, so be gentle, if you can.

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IMO, it is perfectly tidy as long as everything you commit on master has to be reported to develop back. If this workflow fits your needs, just go with it.

Nevertheless, sometimes you may need to apply a fix on the master branch that you don't want to merge back on the develop branch (via a 'support' branch, in the git-flow convention). From that moment, you couldn't afford to merge master on develop anymore thereafter, otherwise you would retrieve some unwanted commits on develop.

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