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A successful Git branching model

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Note of reflection (March 5, 2020)

This model was conceived in 2010, now more than 10 years ago, and not very
long after Git itself
came into being. In those 10 years, git-flow (the
branching model laid out in this article) has become
hugely popular in many
a software team to the point where people have started treating it like
a
standard of sorts — but unfortunately also as a dogma or panacea.

During those 10 years, Git itself has taken the world by a storm, and the
most popular type of
software that is being developed with Git is shifting
more towards web apps — at least in my filter
bubble. Web apps are typically
continuously delivered, not rolled back, and you don't have to support
multiple versions of the software running in the wild.

This is not the class of software that I had in mind when I wrote the blog
post 10 years ago. If your
team is doing continuous delivery of software,
I would suggest to adopt a much simpler workflow
(like GitHub
flow) instead of trying to
shoehorn git-flow into your team.

If, however, you are building software that is explicitly versioned, or if

you need to support multiple
versions of your software in the wild, then
git-flow may still be as good of a fit to your team as it has
been to people
in the last 10 years. In that case, please read on.

To conclude, always remember that panaceas don't exist. Consider your own
context. Don't be hating.
Decide for yourself.

In this post I present the development model that I’ve introduced for some of
my projects (both at work
and private) about a year ago, and which has turned
out to be very successful. I’ve been meaning to
write about it for a while now,
but I’ve never really found the time to do so thoroughly, until now. I won’t
talk about any of the projects’ details, merely about the branching strategy
and release management.

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Why git?
For a thorough discussion on the pros and cons of Git compared to centralized
source code control
systems, see the
web. There are plenty of flame
wars going on there. As a developer, I prefer Git above
all other tools around
today. Git really changed the way developers think of merging and branching.

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From the classic CVS/Subversion world I came from, merging/branching has always
been considered a
bit scary (“beware of merge conflicts, they bite you!”) and
something you only do every once in a while.

But with Git, these actions are extremely cheap and simple, and they are
considered one of the core
parts of your daily workflow, really. For example,
in CVS/Subversion books, branching and merging
is first
discussed in the later chapters (for advanced users), while in
every
Git
book, it’s already covered in
chapter
3 (basics).

As a consequence of its simplicity and repetitive nature, branching and merging

are no longer something
to be afraid of. Version control tools are supposed to
assist in branching/merging more than anything
else.

Enough about the tools, let’s head onto the development model. The model that
I’m going to present
here is essentially no more than a set of procedures that
every team member has to follow in order to
come to a managed software
development process.

Decentralized but centralized

The repository setup that we use and that works well with this branching model,
is that with a central
“truth” repo. Note that this repo is only considered
to be the central one (since Git is a DVCS, there is no
such thing as a central
repo at a technical level). We will refer to this repo as origin , since this
name is
familiar to all Git users.

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Each developer pulls and pushes to origin. But besides the centralized
push-pull relationships, each
developer may also pull changes from other peers
to form sub teams. For example, this might be useful
to work together with two
or more developers on a big new feature, before pushing the work in
progress to
origin prematurely. In the figure above, there are subteams of Alice and Bob,
Alice and
David, and Clair and David.

Technically, this means nothing more than that Alice has defined a Git remote,
named bob , pointing to
Bob’s repository, and vice versa.

The main branches

At the core, the development model is greatly inspired by
existing models out
there. The central repo holds two main
branches with an infinite lifetime:

• master
• develop

The master branch at origin should be familiar to every

Git user. Parallel
to the master branch, another branch exists
called develop .

We consider origin/master to be the main branch where

the source code of
HEAD always reflects a production-ready
state.

We consider origin/develop to be the main branch where

the source code of
HEAD always reflects a state with the
latest delivered development changes
for the next release.
Some would call this the “integration branch”. This is
where any automatic nightly builds are built from.

When the source code in the develop branch reaches a stable point and is
ready to be released, all of
the changes should be merged back into master
somehow and then tagged with a release number.
How this is done in detail will
be discussed further on.

Therefore, each time when changes are merged back into master , this is a new
production release by
definition. We tend to be very strict at this, so that
theoretically, we could use a Git hook script to
automatically build and
roll-out our software to our production servers everytime there was a commit on
master .

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5/7/22, 3:06 AM A successful Git branching model » nvie.com

Supporting branches
Next to the main branches master and develop , our development model uses
a variety of
supporting branches to aid parallel development between team
members, ease tracking of features,
prepare for production releases and to
assist in quickly fixing live production problems. Unlike the main
branches,
these branches always have a limited life time, since they will be removed
eventually.

The different types of branches we may use are:

• Feature branches
• Release branches
• Hotfix branches

Each of these branches have a specific purpose and are bound to strict rules as
to which branches may
be their originating branch and which branches must be
their merge targets. We will walk through them
in a minute.

By no means are these branches “special” from a technical perspective. The

branch types are categorized
by how we use them. They are of course plain old
Git branches.

Feature branches

May branch off from:

develop
Must merge back into:
develop
Branch naming convention:
anything except  master , develop , release-* , or hotfix-*

Feature branches (or sometimes called topic branches) are used to develop new
features for the upcoming or a distant future release. When starting
development
of a feature, the target release in which this feature will be
incorporated may well
be unknown at that point. The essence of a feature branch
is that it exists as long
as the feature is in development, but will eventually
be merged back into
develop (to definitely add the new feature to the
upcoming release) or
discarded (in case of a disappointing experiment).

Feature branches typically exist in developer repos only, not in origin .

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Creating a feature branch

When starting work on a new feature, branch off from the develop branch.

$ git checkout -b myfeature develop

Switched to a new branch "myfeature"

Incorporating a finished feature on develop

Finished features may be merged into the develop branch to definitely add
them to the upcoming
release:

$ git checkout develop

Switched to branch 'develop'
$ git merge --no-ff myfeature
Updating ea1b82a..05e9557
(Summary of changes)
$ git branch -d myfeature
Deleted branch myfeature (was 05e9557).
$ git push origin develop

The --no-ff flag causes the merge to always create a new commit object, even
if the merge could be
performed with a fast-forward. This avoids losing
information about the historical existence of a feature
branch and groups
together all commits that together added the feature. Compare:

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In the latter case, it is impossible to see from the Git history which of the
commit objects together have
implemented a feature—you would have to manually
read all the log messages. Reverting a whole
feature (i.e. a group of commits),
is a true headache in the latter situation, whereas it is easily done if the
--no-ff flag was used.

Yes, it will create a few more (empty) commit objects, but the gain is much
bigger than the cost.

Release branches

May branch off from:

develop
Must merge back into:
develop and master
Branch naming convention:
release-*

Release branches support preparation of a new production release. They allow

for last-minute dotting of
i’s and crossing t’s. Furthermore, they allow for
minor bug fixes and preparing meta-data for a release
(version number, build
dates, etc.). By doing all of this work on a release branch, the develop
branch is
cleared to receive features for the next big release.

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The key moment to branch off a new release branch from develop is when
develop (almost) reflects
the desired state of the new release. At least all
features that are targeted for the release-to-be-built
must be merged in to
develop at this point in time. All features targeted at future releases may
not—
they must wait until after the release branch is branched off.

It is exactly at the start of a release branch that the upcoming release gets
assigned a version number—
not any earlier. Up until that moment, the develop
branch reflected changes for the “next release”, but
it is unclear whether that
“next release” will eventually become 0.3 or 1.0, until the release branch is
started. That decision is made on the start of the release branch and is
carried out by the project’s rules
on version number bumping.

Creating a release branch

Release branches are created from the develop branch. For example, say
version 1.1.5 is the current
production release and we have a big release
coming up. The state of develop is ready for the “next
release” and we have
decided that this will become version 1.2 (rather than 1.1.6 or 2.0). So we
branch off
and give the release branch a name reflecting the new version
number:

$ git checkout -b release-1.2 develop

Switched to a new branch "release-1.2"
$ ./bump-version.sh 1.2
Files modified successfully, version bumped to 1.2.
$ git commit -a -m "Bumped version number to 1.2"
[release-1.2 74d9424] Bumped version number to 1.2
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

After creating a new branch and switching to it, we bump the version number.
Here,  bump-version.sh
is a fictional shell script that changes some files in
the working copy to reflect the new version. (This can
of course be a manual
change—the point being that some files change.) Then, the bumped version
number is committed.

This new branch may exist there for a while, until the release may be rolled
out definitely. During that
time, bug fixes may be applied in this branch
(rather than on the develop branch). Adding large new
features here is
strictly prohibited. They must be merged into develop , and therefore, wait
for the next
big release.

Finishing a release branch

When the state of the release branch is ready to become a real release, some
actions need to be carried
out. First, the release branch is merged into
master (since every commit on master is a new release
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by definition,
remember). Next, that commit on master must be tagged for easy future
reference to this
historical version. Finally, the changes made on the release
branch need to be merged back into
develop , so that future releases also
contain these bug fixes.

The first two steps in Git:

$ git checkout master

Switched to branch 'master'
$ git merge --no-ff release-1.2
Merge made by recursive.
(Summary of changes)
$ git tag -a 1.2

The release is now done, and tagged for future reference.

Edit: You might as well want to use the -s or -u <key> flags to sign
your tag cryptographically.

To keep the changes made in the release branch, we need to merge those back
into develop , though.
In Git:

$ git checkout develop

Switched to branch 'develop'
$ git merge --no-ff release-1.2
Merge made by recursive.
(Summary of changes)

This step may well lead to a merge conflict (probably even, since we have
changed the version number).
If so, fix it and commit.

Now we are really done and the release branch may be removed, since we don’t
need it anymore:

$ git branch -d release-1.2

Deleted branch release-1.2 (was ff452fe).

Hotfix branches
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May branch off from:

master
Must merge back into:
develop and master
Branch naming convention:
hotfix-*

Hotfix branches are very much like release branches in

that they are also meant
to prepare for a new
production release, albeit unplanned. They arise from
the
necessity to act immediately upon an undesired
state of a live production
version. When a critical bug
in a production version must be resolved
immediately,
a hotfix branch may be branched off from the
corresponding tag on
the master branch that marks
the production version.

The essence is that work of team members (on the

develop branch) can
continue, while another person
is preparing a quick production fix.

Creating the hotfix branch

Hotfix branches are created from the  master branch. For example, say version
1.2 is the current
production release running live and causing troubles due to
a severe bug. But changes on develop are
yet unstable. We may then branch off
a hotfix branch and start fixing the problem:

$ git checkout -b hotfix-1.2.1 master

Switched to a new branch "hotfix-1.2.1"
$ ./bump-version.sh 1.2.1
Files modified successfully, version bumped to 1.2.1.
$ git commit -a -m "Bumped version number to 1.2.1"
[hotfix-1.2.1 41e61bb] Bumped version number to 1.2.1
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

Don’t forget to bump the version number after branching off!

Then, fix the bug and commit the fix in one or more separate commits.

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$ git commit -m "Fixed severe production problem"

[hotfix-1.2.1 abbe5d6] Fixed severe production problem
5 files changed, 32 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-)

Finishing a hotfix branch

When finished, the bugfix needs to be merged back into master , but also needs
to be merged back
into develop , in order to safeguard that the bugfix is
included in the next release as well. This is
completely similar to how release
branches are finished.

First, update master and tag the release.

$ git checkout master

Switched to branch 'master'
$ git merge --no-ff hotfix-1.2.1
Merge made by recursive.
(Summary of changes)
$ git tag -a 1.2.1

Edit: You might as well want to use the -s or -u <key> flags to sign
your tag cryptographically.

Next, include the bugfix in develop , too:

$ git checkout develop

Switched to branch 'develop'
$ git merge --no-ff hotfix-1.2.1
Merge made by recursive.
(Summary of changes)

The one exception to the rule here is that, when a release branch currently
exists, the hotfix
changes need to be merged into that release branch, instead
of develop . Back-merging the
bugfix into the release branch will eventually
result in the bugfix being merged into develop too, when
the release branch
is finished. (If work in develop immediately requires this bugfix and cannot
wait for
the release branch to be finished, you may safely merge the bugfix
into develop now already as well.)

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5/7/22, 3:06 AM A successful Git branching model » nvie.com

Finally, remove the temporary branch:

$ git branch -d hotfix-1.2.1

Deleted branch hotfix-1.2.1 (was abbe5d6).

Summary
While there is nothing really shocking new to this branching model, the “big
picture” figure that this post
began with has turned out to be tremendously
useful in our projects. It forms an elegant mental model
that is easy to
comprehend and allows team members to develop a shared understanding of the
branching and releasing processes.

A high-quality PDF version of the figure is provided here. Go ahead and hang it
on the wall for quick
reference at any time.

Update: And for anyone who requested it: here’s the

gitflow-model.src.key of the main diagram image
(Apple Keynote).

Git-branching-model.pdf

Other posts on this blog

• Why .every() on an empty list is true

• Git power tools for daily use
• An intro to decoders
• Beautiful code
• Beautiful map

If you want to get in touch, I'm @nvie on Twitter.

Vincent Driessen is an independent software engineer and consultant from

the Netherlands.

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