Git Cherry-pick vs Merge Workflow

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Assuming I am the maintainer of a repo, and I want to pull in changes from a contributor, there are a few possible workflows:

  1. I cherry-pick each commit from the remote (in order). In this case git records the commit as unrelated to the remote branch.
  2. I merge the branch, pulling in all changes, and adding a new “conflict” commit (if needed).
  3. I merge each commit from the remote branch individually (again in order), allowing conflicts to be recorded for each commit, instead of grouped all together as one.
  4. For completeness, you could do a rebase (same as cherry-pick option?), however my understanding is that this can cause confusion for the contributor. Maybe that eliminates option 1.

In both cases 2 and 3, git records the branch history of the commits, unlike 1.

What are the pro’s and con’s between using either cherry-pick or merge methods described? My understanding is that method 2 is the norm, but I feel that resolving a large commit with a single “conflict” merge, is not the cleanest solution.

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