Simple Git Workflow For Continuous Delivery

Workflow guidelines:

• master branch is always production-ready, deployable, 100% green test suite
• New development is done on feature branches, with frequent rebasing onto master
• Clean commit history by preferring to rebase instead of merge (git pull is configured to automatically rebase)

Workflow

1. Pull the latest from origin/master:
   
   git pull origin master

   1 2	git pull origin master

2. Create your feature branch
   
   git checkout -b concise-feature-branch-name

   1 2	git checkout -b concise-feature-branch-name

3. Begin work on the new feature
4. Keep your feature branch updated with master by rebasing onto master:
   
   git fetch origin master git rebase origin/master

   1 2 3

   git fetch origin master git rebase origin/master

   
   or
   
   git checkout master git pull git checkout concise-feature-branch-name git rebase master

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   git checkout master git pull git checkout concise-feature-branch-name git rebase master

   
   Resolve any conflicts that occur during rebase.
5. Push your branch remotely and create a pull request when ready for peer review:
   
   git push -u origin concise-feature-branch-name

   1 2	git push -u origin concise-feature-branch-name

   
   Depending on peer review, keep pushing changes to the remote as needed.
6. Interactively rebase your feature branch onto master once the feature is approved and ready for production:
   
   git rebase -i origin/master

   1 2	git rebase -i origin/master

7. Merge into master:
   
   git checkout master git pull origin master # The --no-ff is optional here...see the notes below git merge --no-ff concise-feature-branch-name git push origin master # This is also a good time to create a release tag git tag 1.0.10 git push 1.0.10

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

   git checkout master git pull origin master # The --no-ff is optional here...see the notes below git merge --no-ff concise-feature-branch-name git push origin master # This is also a good time to create a release tag git tag 1.0.10 git push 1.0.10

8. Remove all branches that have been merged into master:
   
   git branch -d concise-feature-branch-name git push origin :concise-feature-branch-name

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   git branch -d concise-feature-branch-name git push origin :concise-feature-branch-name

Notes

• Git config for rebasing by default:
  
  git config --global branch.autosetuprebase always git config --global pull.rebase true

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  git config --global branch.autosetuprebase always git config --global pull.rebase true

• Merging into master in step 7 with the –no-ff option will create a merge commit even if the merge could be a fast-forward. Having this merge commit is helpful in that it retains the commits that went into the feature branch. (If you don’t care to keep this series of commits on a feature branch or the feature branch was a single commit, you can omit the --no-ff in the merge command and let it fast-foward.) Single-level merge bubbles like this are ok. Here’s what we don’t want:

credits: https://gist.github.com/leesmith/8441773#workflow-guidelines