Jan Stolarek
If there are multiple commits then a merge commit can serve to logically group them. The cost of this is non-linear history. But I am still not sure what the actual benefit is? If the commits come one after another they are still logically grouped, with or without a merge commit.
I also wonder what is the preferred way of viewing history for most of the people. I either use `git log` or github, but rarely resort to gitk. Only the latter makes the non-linear commits explicitly visible. The former two just collapse everything into a linear history and is such a setting merge commits are a major clutter. So perhaps that's why I don't like them. Perhaps people who tend to use gitk are more keen on merge commits?
Indeed I make quite frequent use of gitk (even git log --graph is pretty usable). Cheers, - Ben