Complex Build/Project Management

Question

My company is in the process of restructuring our repository using GIT. Basically, we will have:

• (A) Master Repo that is an unbuilt mirror of our built production deployment
• (B) Continuous Integration Branch that is used for hotfixes,
• (C) Release Branch that is used for major/minor updates
• (D) Long Term Feature Branch

How it needs to work:

• (A) will be our master copy. Other than beta testers, everyone will be using a built version of (A) at all times.
• (B) will be a nightly or on-the-fly (whichever is needed) update containing hotfixes. (B) will be routed through unit testing and then hallway testing. When (B) finishes testing, it needs to be merged into (A) as well as (C) and (D) so that all concurrent development has the latest bug fixes.
• (C) will be released monthly. It will be unit tested (like everything), hallway tested, and then user tested on a staging server (beta).
• (D), in theory, will be folded into (C) and released within.

I am currently developing a tool using Apache Ant and Ivy to automate this process along with building. Stuff will be pushed into (A) while it is also built and pushed into production. This process will run e2e tests and, if successful, continue on to automate documentation, compile source code, and deploy a built product into production. The real challenge comes with figuring out how to balance all of these different processes.

Now, on to the question. What I need to know is whether there are any development "models" out there that can handle this sort of pattern so that we aren't reinventing the wheel so to speak.

The technology we are talking about is HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, with a websocket connection to the backend running on NodeJS. Thanks in advance.

EDIT

Also, if there are any ways to do this that doesn't involve repositories (code management tools for example), I would love to know. Thanks again

Answer 1

Check git-flow, It describe a similar work flow (a bit more complex I think) as the one you want.