It’s still a tool for creating as many branches as you need and handling as many merges as there are branches.Ĭontinuous delivery needs a continuous development model (and the associated integration and deployment tooling). While Git-flow formalizes how you use Git, it doesn’t change why you’re using it or even what you build with it. There’s also the option of using Git-flow as a way of managing hypothesis-driven development, with multiple development and release branches, used to handle A/B tests and delivery to separate build and deployment chains. Once a sprint is over, feature branches can be merged with the development branch and so on down to release. Feature branches can be tied to sprints and used to control burndown, giving sprint leads a view not only of what code is being developed, but also of how it’s written. Git-flow makes a lot of sense as a way of managing modern software development. Roles can help here, too, so a build manager would be able to access the release and production branches, while devops engineers would get access to the hotfix branch, as well as the development branch. If you’re in the development branch, you’ll be prompted to create a feature if you’re in a feature, you’ll be offered the option of merging with development branch. Tools can simplify operations by offering defaults based on what you’re currently doing. Tools like Atlassian’s SourceTree make it as easy as clicking a button - then choosing the action you want. Once a feature is ready, that branch can be merged back into the development branch, ready for release and integration back into the master branch. As soon as you make a copy of a repository, it’s classed as a feature branch, and you can start to write and test code. This approach works well with familiar source control tools. For example, a service that has both iOS and Android mobile apps might have branches for features on both platforms, but an Android developer will only synchronize with the Android-specific branches. With centrally managed release and master branches, there’s always one point of truth for the application, and developers can build their own replica repositories with the bits they need to build their part of an app. A separate hotfix branch is used for critical bug fixes that don’t depend on new features, which can be deployed as soon as they’re tested. The develop branch is the code that the development team is working from, handling merges from the various feature branches, and merging down to the release branch when ready for release. Master is the code that’s currently deployed, with sub-branches for each release. At the heart of the model are two core branches: master and develop. You’re not throwing away the advantages of using Git instead, you’re streamlining what could have been a complex process.ĭrilling down into Driessen’s original paper, it’s clear that the Git-flow model is designed to replicate the structure of a modern, blended devops team. Git-flow takes a logical approach to managing Git’s branches, using them to handle both feature development and software releases - as well as to manage repositories for all your developers and your operations team. It’s a technique that’s rapidly become popular, and now various source control tools that use Git as a repository provide tooling for implementing Git-flow in your development teams. Initially proposed by Vincent Driessen, it’s a way of formalizing how you use branches, as well as how your development team handles commits and merges. They’re so easy to create and use that a typical Git repository can appear to be the software equivalent of a tangled ball of wool, waiting to be wound. Branches are a key feature of Git, making it easy to quickly take source code, modify it, add new features, and merge them back. There’s even the option of local and cloud instances, so you use Git as a collaboration tool for shared and for open development, as well as letting developers take a clone of the code repository on their laptops.Ĭhoosing a tool doesn’t solve your continuous development problems overnight, and you’re going to need to implement an appropriate workflow to accommodate new ways of writing and building code - and to take advantage of the way Git handles code branching. There’s Git integration with popular IDEs (including Eclipse and Visual Studio) and with proprietary version control platforms like Perforce. A key element of that tool chest is source control, with Git as one of the more popular tools.
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