4. Then, conflict would happen when you merge release/4.4. branch to release/4.5. Since the version number changed to 4.4.1. You need to deal with version number conflict every time when merge to upper release.
one empty merge with git merge -s ours after the version change and git would not complain again. git would assume that conflicts are resolved and that particular commit need not be merged again. git merges are relative it won’t merge the entire tree each and every time. ~ Rajani
