The guidance instructions for resolving automatic merge conflicts is destructive.

We have a branching structure where we have a release branch that forks from master. The instructions suggest that user should first merge the target branch into the current source branch, before merging that back into the master. The developer then pushed those changes in his local release branch back up to Stash, and the changes proliferated from there.

It would be better if the suggestion were to merge up into a branch based off the source branch, rather than directly into the source branch itself. This would have saved a major headache.