Squash merging combines all commits from a feature branch into a single commit when merging to maintain a clean, linear project history. As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, and with over 25 years of experience in software development, I’ve managed thousands of feature merges where clean commit history is crucial for project maintenance. The most effective approach is using git merge --squash, which combines all changes from the feature branch into staging without creating a merge commit. This method is perfect for feature branches with multiple work-in-progress commits that should be consolidated.

Fast-forward merging is a clean way to integrate changes when your target branch hasn’t diverged from the feature branch. As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, and with over 25 years of experience in software development, I’ve managed countless branch integrations where maintaining a linear history is crucial for project clarity. The most effective approach is using git merge --ff-only to ensure you only merge when a fast-forward is possible, keeping your commit history clean and readable. This method prevents unnecessary merge commits when they don’t add value to the project history.

Merging branches is fundamental for integrating feature work, bug fixes, and collaborative contributions into the main codebase in Git workflows. As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, I’ve merged thousands of branches from contributors worldwide, managing feature integration and release cycles across multiple repositories. From my expertise, the most standard approach is to use git merge command after switching to the target branch. This method creates merge commits that preserve the history of both branches, enabling clear tracking of feature integration and easy rollback if needed.

Merging arrays is essential when combining data from multiple sources, concatenating user selections, or building unified datasets in JavaScript applications. With over 25 years of experience in software development and as the creator of CoreUI, I’ve implemented array merging extensively in components like multi-select filters, data aggregation systems, and navigation builders where multiple arrays need to be combined. From my extensive expertise, the most modern and efficient solution is using the ES6 spread operator, which creates a new array without mutating the original arrays. This approach is clean, readable, and performs well for most use cases.