In abandoning "check in early and often" and trying to have as few merges as possible, it begs the question: Should I merge "early and often" eh?

...or alternatively should I just have one big merge at the end. There is no consensus amongst my coworkers. If I have one big merge at the end, it should make it easier to make a safety copy of the whole codebase (if repeated as a chore constantly this is annoying) in advance of pulling down possibly breaking changes.