Re: Git branch workflow
- From
- tom fogal <tfogal@sci.utah.edu>
- Date
- Nov 23, 2010, 00:43 UTC
- Message-ID
- <4CEB0E2A.5080304@sci.utah.edu>
- In-Reply-To
- <20101122170805.8jtzkqwxpcog0kgk@dennymagicsite.com>
Hi Dennis,
denny@dennymagicsite.com wrote:
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> my website was small enough where I usually fixed everything live on > production server, including adding new features, doing bug fixes and so > on. > > Now, with git I can create branches in whatever order I want, and then > merge them whenever I want and push things to production whenever I want. > With this, comes confusion of what a good branch workflow is. And this > will be my question -- in what order and from which branches to I create > new branches and how do I merge them back.
This is, of course, a matter of opinion. Despite what I say below, I would say the best advice with git is: try it! Experiment with a few different workflows. Give each a week or two. I think you'll find there are advantages to any approach, but there's one that works best for *you*.
The nice thing about git is that you don't have to use the workflow that works for "me" (for generic "me") -- you get to adapt git to fit the workflow you have, instead of adapting your workflow to fit the git you've got.
Show 11 quoted lines
> Consider a specific scenario: > I am on dev server on master branch and I want to develop a specific > feature F. > I cut a Feature branch F from master and start working on the feature. > Once I am done with most of the work on F and it works reasonably well, > I want to push it to production, but .. before I do I realize that I > want to make some CSS fixes to the site, unrelated to other branches, > and I can wait with pushing Feature branch to Production until I fix up > CSS reasonably well. > Here is the question: do I cut the CSS branch from Master or do I cut > it from the Feature branch?
I would personally base 'css' off of master. Although with the caveat, since I just recently did something dumb and lost data <g>, that I would (now) push 'feature' to some backup repo first. Not make it live, just push it somewhere so it's backed up.
My logic is: a) the two things are logically disjoint. I can always decide later that I want to bring them together. It's much harder to decide later that I want to pull them apart (though, admittedly, still possible); b) pushing to production involves certain risks. Maybe you had a silly PEBKAC and broke some shell script, and now your entire site gives 401 errors. By keeping them separate you can push to production + verify each branch separately, which hopefully makes the problem easier to figure out should you have a hand-to-forehead moment.
[snip]
Show 6 quoted lines
> Supplementary questions that may help define a good workflow for my case: > * What if later a bug is discovered in the Feature. If I already > merged Feature branch into Master and deleted Feature branch, do I > create a FeatureBugFix branch? Or do I keep the original Feature branch > without removing it for a while? If so, for how long do I keep it? Do > I perhaps keep a general BugFix branch instead that I don't remove?
I don't have a set guide for doing this myself. I go through and delete old branches whenever "git branch" grows so many lines of output that it annoys me. That said, it's extremely rare that I use a branch which has been merged back to master: instead I make a new bugfix-branch which is based off of master (or, more commonly: the release branch).
Cheers && HTH,
-tom