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Git Flow#

In this short article, we will explain the concept of Git Flow briefly.

Git Flow is one of the most wide known workfows. The others are GitHub Flow, GitLab Flow, One Flow and so on.

Git Flow is based on two long-lived/permanent branches.

  • main/master, we use main in this article. It is the de facto production, all codes will be merged into this branch sooner or later.
  • develop, pre-production. When we complete the features coding, the feature branch will be merged into develop.

There are also some other types of branches besides these two long-lived ones.

  • Feature branches, for developing new features in the next release cycle. Feature branches always use develop as their parent branch and when a feature is complete, it gets merged back into develop. Features should never interact directly with main.

    # Starting 
git checkout develop
git checkout -b feature

# Finishing
git checkout develop
git merge feature

  • Hotfix branches, maintenance or hotfix branches are used to quickly patch production releases. This is the only branch that should fork directly off of main. As soon as the fix is complete, it should be merged into both main and develop.

    # Starting 
git checkout main
git checkout -b hotfix

# Finishing
git checkout main
git merge hotfix
git checkout develop
git merge hotfix
git branch -D hotfix

  • Release branches, are based on a ready to release develop branch, which means develop has acquired enough features for a release or a predetermined release date is approaching. So, only bug fixes, documentation generation, and other release-oriented tasks should go in this branch. Once it's ready, the release branch gets merged into main and tagged with a version number. It should also be merged back into develop, which may have progressed since the release was initiated.

    # Starting 
git checkout develop
git checkout -b release/v0.1.0

# Finishing
git checkout main
git merge release/v0.1.0
git checkout develop
git merge release/v0.1.0

Advantages#

  • The two long-lived branches are clean during the release cycle.
  • The branches naming method is easy to understand.
  • It is widely supported by most of the git tools.
  • It is well designed for maintaining multiple production versions in the project.

Shortcomings#

  • The Git history grows, which lacks of readability.
  • The long-lived feature branches require more collaboration to merge and have a higher risk of deviating from the trunk branch which can also introduce conflicting updates.

Summary#

Git Flow is one of many styles of Git workflows, it is great for a release-based software workflow. And it offers a dedicated channel for hotfixes to production.

The overall flow of Git Flow is:

  • A develop branch is created from main
  • A release branch is created from develop
  • Feature branches are created from develop
  • When a feature is complete, it is merged into the develop branch
  • When the release branch is done, it is merged into develop and main
  • If an issue in main is detected, a hotfix branch is created from main
  • Once the hotfix is complete, it is merged to both develop and main

References#