Main branches
There are two main branches to be maintained: master and develop.
The develop branch
The develop branch is what we consider the main branch. Feature branches merge into this branch.
Nobody should push commits directly into this branch. Instead, work starts by creating feature branches from develop. They'll be merged back in when finished. In practice, the develop branch only has merge commits from feature branches.
The develop branch is always in a "ready to test" state. All automated tests should always be passing in this branch. You should also set up a staging server to sync with the latest develop version for testing (see automated deployments).
The master branch
The master is maintained to be in a production-ready state. While the develop branch is ready for developers and testers, the master branch is ready for users.
At the end of a sprint, the develop branch will be merged into master. This effectively promotes the current development version into a production version. From then, automated deployments will take care of deploying it to production. This means whatever's live on production at any moment is always what's the latest on master.
See also...
- § Automation describes how you can synchronize your staging servers with the develop branch.
Next: Let's start working by creating a feature branch.