Summary

This chapter has shown how to effectively use branches for development and for collaboration.

We got to know a wide set of the various uses of branches, from integration, through release management and the parallel development of features, to fixing bugs. You have learned different branching workflows, including the very useful and widely used topic branch workflow. The knowledge should help you make the best use of branching, customizing the model of work to fit the project and your own preferences.

You have also learned how to deal with multiple branches per repository while downloading or publishing changes. Git provides flexibility in how the information on branches and other refs in the remote repository are managed using the so-called refspecs to define mapping to local refs: remote-tracking branches, local branches, and tags. Usually, fetching is governed by fetch refspec, but pushing is managed by the configured push mode. Various collaborative workflows require a different...