From: Ondrej Mosnáček on
gitlab.com
https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark/-/commit/691f37398b27a8a10853eb...
The problem with the `git merge` approach would be if you wanted to get
the infra stuff on top of some older mainline tag/commit (e.g. for
bisecting). If the branch is just a couple commits on top of `master`,
you can easily rebase/cherry-pick it anywhere you want (modulo merge
conflicts). If it had `master` continually merged into it, then it would
be infeasible to rebase it (I think... or the result would be messy
because of the merge commits) and if you tried to merge it on top of an
old revision, it would pull the whole `master` with it.
As a kernel developer, I often use the ARK tree to scratch-build almost-
mainline testing kernels (with some patches on top) in Koji, so having a
branch that can be easily moved around would be a plus for me.