Don't we want to spent a new MergeStatus for this? Users of our API (e.g. EGit, jgit-pgm) may want to decide on MergeStatus what to report to the end-user. E.g. EGit can detect by MergeStatus whether the HEAD has moved or not (ALREADY_UP_TO_DATE vs. MERGED|FAST_FORWARD) and because of that other actions may be triggered (decoration,...) . But if we report MERGED as status we don't give the higher layers a chance to act properly.