CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitversion-controlgit-flowbranching-strategy
LiKao
LiKao

Reputation: 10658

Multiple development branches with git-flow

I am currently looking a lot into git-flow, and trying to figure out, how to use it for the projects I am involved on.

I have looked at the various git-flow tutorials and I am fairly familiar with git. Hence I do not need any tips on git alone, but directly on the workflow with git-flow.

Here is the situation:

When I relase a version (let's call it 1.0), this get's branched of develop, which is fine. Let's say now I start working on 2.0, adding new features. And of course I want to merge them back onto develop, once I am done. Now hotfixing on 1.0 is fine, so let's also say I produce several versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2 etc. All these will also update the develop branch, which is also nice. So far now hassle, I can develop features for 2.0 and hotfixes for 1.0.x independtly.

However let's say someone requests a new feature for a 1.1 release. Now I have a problem. If I create a feature branch, this will be based upon the develop branch, which might already contain 2.0 stuff, which I might not want in this 1.1 release.

Is there a simple way, to handle these 2.0 and 1.1 changes independtly?

There are several possibilities I see already:

Is this possible at all with git flow? I.e. basing releases upon an earlier release once the work for a newer release has been started or even finished?

Upvotes: 22

Views: 16064

Answers (4)

Anton
Anton

Reputation: 1583

I believe if you want to support two versions of app at the same time it will be better to create two different repositories for that.

Upvotes: 1

Aaron Lozier
Aaron Lozier

Reputation: 320

I realize this is an old question, but I just found a fairly simple way of handling it on my end.

On my development server I basically have two working copies, one for v1.0 and another for v2.0.

I then create a separate "develop" branch for v2.0, and when I run "git flow init" on the 2.0 environment, I use this as my "next release" branch.

I am sure you could do the same for the master branch, but for my purposes this was sufficient.

Upvotes: 0

Adam Dymitruk
Adam Dymitruk

Reputation: 129526

More on "git-flow improved":

https://plus.google.com/109096274754593704906/posts/R4qkeyRadLR

The key is to start features from the point of last release. Whether you have 1 or more supported versions that are published should not be an issue.

UPDATE:

I have it rewritten - in blog form:

http://dymitruk.com/blog/2012/02/05/branch-per-feature/

Upvotes: 5

user229044
user229044

Reputation: 239230

Is this possible at all with git flow?

Anything is possible using git-flow as a series of best-practices rather than a hard rule. Just open your feature branches from your 1.0 release branch instead of from your develop branch.

Upvotes: 4

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