Merging release branches back to parent

Hi RMs, we currently use release branches which we don't merge back into the original branch.I would like to propose to change this and merge the release branch back into it's parent branch. To the est of my remembrance not doing this is a reminder of SVN merge tracking annoyance which is not relevant anymore. The reason for this change is that it makes it hard to find out whether a patch was part of a release or not and which release it appeared in first. The suggested work flow (pushes ignored) is like this: 1. git checkout PHP-X.Y 2. git branch PHP-X.Y.Z 3. vim NEWS configure.in main/php_version.h && git commit (set to next version X.Y.Z+1) 4. git checkout PHP-X.Y.Z 5. test, cherry pick and release RCs as needed 6. vim NEWS configure.in main/php_version.h && git commit (for release) 7. git tag -s php-X.Y.Z 8. git checkout PHP X.Y 9. git merge PHP-X.Y.Z 10. resolve merge conflict in NEWS and other files && git commit The only change to the current procedure should be that instead of 9 and 10 one currently manually merges NEWS files. johannes