Git branch workflow

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.

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?

If I want to keep close to my original before-git workflow, I say, either
*  merge Feature with Master
*  cut CSS branch from Master
*  do CSS fixes
*  merge CSS with Master
*  push Dev Master to Prod Master

or
*  cut CSS branch from Feature, as Feature already has latest code
*  when I am done with CSS, merge CSS into Feature
*  merge Feature into Master (and remove Feature)
*  push Dev Master to Prod Master

There are tons of other variations that are possible. Which workflow is preferred for this scenario?

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?
*  currently I am the only developer working on the code.  This will  
not change in the forseeable future.

Dennis

Hi Dennis,

denny@dennymagicsite.com wrote:

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.

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]

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

* denny@dennymagicsite.com <denny@dennymagicsite.com> wrote:

My advise: always fork from the latest stable revision (in your case: production server's master). Before merging, always rebase onto latest master and possibly rerun the test cycle.

cu

On Mon, 2010-11-22 at 17:08 +0000, denny@dennymagicsite.com wrote:

Each may be overkill, but perhaps these will give you some ideas: http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/

Referencing the above and other inspirations: http://www.silverwareconsulting.com/index.cfm/2010/9/13/A-Git-Workflow-for-Open-Source-Collaboration--Part-I--Introduction

Good luck finding something that works for you!