Comment by baptou12

  But to me, what matters is the actual change to main/master at the time the thing is merged — that is what affects the team.

Totally agree, if the developper goes in wrong product direction at the beginning and add 10 additional commits afterwards: team + 6 month actually don't care about it.

  I certainly see no point in merging it in when it based on an ancient ancestor

If you want the CI to run, before the merge on the result it will produce on main branch ?