common-flow/common-flow.md

Git Common-Flow 1.0.0-draft.1

Summary

Common-Flow is an attempt to gather a sensible selection of the most common usage patterns of git out in the wild into a single and concise specification. It is based on the original variant of GitHub Flow, while taking into account how a lot of open source projects use git.

Terminology:

• Master Branch - Should always be deployable/usable, is considered bleeding edge, and must be named master.
• Change Branches - Any branch that introduces changes (new feature, bug fix, etc), should be created off of the master branch, and must have a descriptive name.
• Maintenance Branches - Used to maintain old versions, and should follow a stable-X.Y naming pattern, where X is MAJOR version and Y is MINOR version.
• Pull Request - A means of requesting that a change branch is merged in to the master branch, allowing others to review, discuss and approve the changes.
• Release - Consists of a version bump commit directly on the master branch, and a git tag named according to the new version number placed on said commit.

Requirements overview:

• The "master" branch should always be deployable/usable, while also considered to be bleeding edge.
• New work must be done on a descriptively named change branch created off of the master branch.
• Commit to the change branch locally, and regularly push your work to the same named branch on the remote server.
• When you need feedback, help, or think the branch is ready for merging, open a pull request.
• After someone else has reviewed and signed off on the change, you can merge it in to the master branch.
• New releases are created by committing a version bump commit directly to the master branch, and then tagging that commit with the version.
• Maintenance branches are updated by manually merging and/or back-porting relevant change branches in to them.

Git Common-Flow Specification (Common-Flow)

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

1. A branch called "master" MUST exist, and it SHOULD be referred to as the "master branch". The master branch MUST always be in a non-broken state, but MUST be considered to be "bleeding edge". That means the master branch MUST always be in a good enough state that, depending on your deployment/release flow, a new release can always be built from master, or that master can always be safely deployed to production.
2. Changes MUST be performed on a separate branch that SHOULD be referred to as a "change branch". All change branches MUST have descriptive names. You SHOULD commit often locally, and you MUST regularly push your work to the same named branch on the remote server.