Sergey Organov [off-list ref] writes:
quoted
A sentence "--force has no effect under --preserve-merges mode" does
not tell the readers very much, either and leaves them wondering if
it means "--preserve-merges mode always rebases every time it is
asked, never noticing 'ah, the history is already in a good shape
and there is no need to do anything further'" or "--preserve-merges
mode ignores --force and refuses to recreate the history if the
history is in the shape the mode deems is already desirable."
In fact there is no way to force rebase when --preserve-merges is given.
Neither --force nor --no-ff has any effect.
Maybe some clarification could be given in --preserve-merges
description, provided it's not clear that "has no effect" for --force
means that one can't force the rebase in this case.
I am not sure if that is an intended behaviour or simply a bug (I
rarely use preserve-merges myself, so I offhand do not know for
certain).