Branching workflows and release engineering

Now that we know what types of branches are there and what their purposes are, let's examine how branches are used. Note that different situations call for different use of branches. For example, smaller projects are better suited for simpler branching workflows, while larger projects might need more advanced ones.

We will now describe here how to use different standard workflows. Each workflow is distinguished by the various types of branches it uses (the types described earlier in this chapter). In addition to getting to know how the ongoing development looks like for a given workflow, we would also see what to do at the time of the new release (major and minor, where relevant). Among others, we will find out what happens then to branches used in the chosen workflow.

The release and trunk branches workflow

One of the simplest workflows is to use just a single integration branch. Such branches are sometimes called the trunk; in Git, it would usually...