Re: git merge vs git commit

Russell King [off-list ref] writes:

If there aren't any conflicts, you get a nice clean merge, resulting in:
...
However, if you have a conflict that needs resolving, you fix it up as
...
instead - an additional reference from commit 'K' back to commit 'A'
which isn't present in the clean merge case.

Is this intentional, or is it a bug?

I think some changes went into 1.6.0 around this area to (r)eject parents
that are redundant.  What happens when you use more recent git with the
same example?