git init
Will create default main branch
git add .
git commit -m 'Commit description'
git remote add origin https://github.com/myprofile/myrepo.git
git push -u origin main
origin is a nickname of remote repo, normally meaning the main remote repo. We can have many remote repos set up and we can check them with
git remote -v
-u flag means set upstream, so after that we won't need to specify remote repo nickname and branch and can just use git push and it will push commits to upstream
git checkout -b develop
git push -u origin develop
checkout -b command means switch to a branch after creating it. If we want to switch to existing branch we won't use -b flag.
As we can see, we can specify separate upstreams for separate branches, so local develop branch will push commits to corresponding remote branch
git checkout -b feat/feature-name develop
Normal convention is to label feature branches with feature/ or feat/ prefix.
To set up the branch from which new branch will be brached off we use second argument after the branch name:
git checkout -b <new-branch-name> <branched-off-name>
git add .
git commit -m 'feat (feature name): Description'
git pull origin develop
# resolve possible conflicts
git add .
git commit -m 'feat (feature name): Merge with current develop'
git push -u origin feat/feature-name
# pull request from feat/feature-name to develop
As normal convention, direct push into develop branch must be restricted and merging process must be accomplished via pull request from your feature branch into develop. This way your peers may review code to double check there are no issues.
Before the push we always want to pull latest version from develop branch to make sure we have latest code. Pulling might possibly create conflicts with your current conflicts, which we need to resolve and then commit resolved version that is ready to merge with develop branch.
git add .
git commit -m 'feat (feature name): Description'
git pull --rebase origin develop
# resolve possible conflicts
git add <conflict-file>
git rebase --continue
git push -u origin feat/feature-name
# pull request from feat/feature-name to develop
Note, that if there are no conflicts you won't need to add <conflict-file> to staging and continue rebase, you can just push your commit to remote. Many large companies seemed to prefer rebase tactic over "pull and merge" one.
git checkout -b release/releave-tag develop
git push -u origin release/releave-tag
Release branch is the branch that gets tested before merging into main. If we or QA team will find some issues with code in release branch, we will create fix branch, fix the issue and pull request it into release. Release tag would look something like v1.2.5, you can read more about semantic versioning here.
Make pull requests from release into develop and main branches to sync codebases.
git checkout main
git tag release-tag
git push origin release-tag
Note that tags and releases are different things on github. Pushing a tag will not create a release. To create a release you need to go to the github and create one from a tag. This post explains difference between tags and releases and how to use them incredibly well!
The only branches that allowed to branch out of main should be hotfix branches:
git checkout -b hotfix/what-to-fix main
Similarly to feature and release branches, hotfix branch is prefixed with hotfix/.
When done fixing hotfix, we make a pull request into main branch and create new tag according to semantic versioning conventions.
git add .
git commit -m 'hotfix (what-to-fix): Fixed'
git push -u origin hotfix/what-to-fix
# pull request from hotfix/what-to-fix into develop
# pull request from hotfix/what-to-fix into main
git checkout main
git tag patch-version
git push origin patch-version
Note the pattern - main branch shall never be ahead of develop, we always sync them when updating main.
After the release it is a good practice to delete all secondary, previously merged branches.
git branch -d hotfix/what-to-fix
git push --delete origin hotfix/what-to-fix
git branch -d feat/feature-name
git push --delete origin feat/feature-name
Note that deleting a branch locally will not delete it on the remote repo! Therefore we use push --delete command to do so.