how to merge branch along with merge commit

Assume I have created a dev branch from master branch at some point. I made a few commits to dev and then merge these commits back to master. If I blatantly use the following command,

$ git checkout master
$ git merge dev

when checking git log of master, the commits will be added but there is no merge commit which provides some useful information on when the merge occured. This could be useful when reverting a merge since all that needs to be done is revert the merge commit.

If there wasn’t a merge commit and one had to undo the merge operation, the user will have to remove the additional commits that were applied to master branch which is a frusterating task to do.

If I was to merge some other branch along with a merge commit, the following command should do the trick.

$ git checkout master
$ git merge --no-ff dev

--no-ff option stands for no fastforwarding. This command will prompt up a confirmation of the merge commit message and after the user approves it, the dev commits will be merged to master branch along with a merge commit.