I noticed in [PEP 512 - Document steps to commit a pull request]( https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0512/#document-steps-to-commit-a-pull-re...) it says that CPython on GitHub won't be able to use GitHub's "Merge" button on pull requests, because we want a linear history with one commit per change/issue. However, GitHub recently (actually on April 1, 2016 -- but it's not a joke :-) added support for "commit squashing". See https://github.com/blog/2141-squash-your-commits and https://help.github.com/articles/about-pull-request-merges/ ... basically you can do "old-GitHub-style merge" commits or "squash and merge" commits, and you can even set a repo to only allow "squash and merge" commits on that repo. Will CPython be able to use this? I think that using GitHub's integrated pull request and merge features will make it much easier for contributors (and core developers for that matter). And from personal experience, pressing that big green button is very satisfying. :-) P.S. While I'm here: is there a timeline for the various stages of PEP 512? -Ben