290
votes
New developer can't keep up with branch merges
I assume you're using git. If so, make use of git rebase -i (the -i means interactive). Make it a daily task (even more frequently, if necessary) to rebase your branch against the develop branch. ...
- 2,011
198
votes
Accepted
What are the advantages of using branching as a solo developer?
The advantages are mostly the same as for groups of developers. By using an always release-ready master branch, and feature branches for developing new features, you can always release off the master. ...
- 15.4k
133
votes
Whose responsibility is it to fix merge conflicts?
Person A is the one who decides when to incorporate new changes from master, so Person A will perform the merge. Person A should certainly attempt to resolve merge conflicts on their own, but if any ...
- 40.8k
130
votes
New developer can't keep up with branch merges
This might be a sign of bad software engineering on the company's part. Too many inter dependencies, different issues with overlapping features, attempting to tackle issues in the wrong order etc. can ...
- 1,327
129
votes
Working on a branch with a dependence on another branch that is being reviewed
Hold on, skip merging
For this approach, you do not want to merge your feature_a into feature_b repeatedly.
Rebasing has been mentioned in other answers, but only for rebasing things onto master. ...
- 5,857
99
votes
New developer can't keep up with branch merges
The accepted answers I think are more of a technical "how to use Git better" nature, I think this is more of a team problem than an engineering or tooling problem.
If you're encountering a lot of ...
- 1,089
89
votes
Accepted
How do you handle integrating code from multiple branches/developers each sprint?
If you are using Git, each developer would be pulling from the develop branch into their own feature branch so that they ensure they don't go too far from the current baseline. They can do that daily,...
- 46.2k
87
votes
Accepted
Is it better to merge "often" or only after completion do a big merge of feature branches?
The longer a branch lives, the more it is able to diverge from the main branch and the messier and more complicated the resulting merge will be when it's finally finished. Ten small conflicts are ...
- 5,498
66
votes
Accepted
Where does refactoring belong in GitFlow branch naming model?
Refactoring work should go in a feature branch.
The prefix "feature" is just a word to describe a discrete programming task, you could choose any word you like, any branch from development is either ...
- 78.5k
62
votes
Accepted
Git - What issues arise from working directly on master?
There are several problems when commits are directly pushed to master
If you push a work-in-progress state to remote, the master is potentially broken
If another developer starts work for a new ...
- 736
47
votes
Working on a branch with a dependence on another branch that is being reviewed
I have this problem too sometimes. Git is very flexible. Here's one way you can do it.
Your first branch featureA is up for review.
Your second branch featureB is in development and depends on the ...
- 639
43
votes
What are the advantages of using branching as a solo developer?
Long running development
Branching for a single person team would be useful for a long-running development feature that otherwise does not fit into your release cycle.
You can take a branch for your ...
- 2,633
33
votes
Working on a branch with a dependence on another branch that is being reviewed
You already have a branch on which your every feature branch depends, and which keeps changing. It's called master.
The typical way for a feature branch to stay in sync with master is to stay on top ...
- 24.3k
29
votes
New developer can't keep up with branch merges
The most important thing about merging is that the longer you wait, the more painful it gets. And the problem grows more than linear. Three times as many conflicts are nine times as much work. There ...
- 46.7k
27
votes
Where should QA team do the testing in Gitflow branching model
QA should probably be testing twice.
The first testing should be around the specific changes and done on the feature branch. This lets QA test around the specific changes and see that the particular ...
- 83.7k
23
votes
How do you handle integrating code from multiple branches/developers each sprint?
I worked in a team where we struggled with the same problem. We found that the less time we had before integrating, the less difficult it became. I know most people teaching continuous integration ...
- 2,041
22
votes
Accepted
Keep branches from piling up
It sounds like you have a few problems here:
1. Identifying features for a specific release
This is a project management issue, and a coordination issue. Will this feature be released before, at the ...
- 693
19
votes
Making recursion optional: Bad practice?
The guiding principles here should be separation of concerns:
The caller should invoke a function only with the parameters that are relevant for the result regardless how the calculation is ...
- 79.9k
19
votes
Whose responsibility is it to fix merge conflicts?
Practically speaking it is Person A, the branch owner.
In reality there will be branches C, D, E, and F that will now have conflicts with master, Person B won't be able to fix them all.
However, If ...
- 78.5k
16
votes
What are the advantages of using branching as a solo developer?
I use it for critical website maintenance. I'm the sole developer yet I have a master, develop and issue branches.
My work process for site setup looks like this:
Make workable master branch. Do ...
- 387
16
votes
Accepted
How do we avoid development files in the release?
When we make a release, that release contains not only the actual release files but also contains all the meta and testing stuff. This happens because GitHub's way of creating releases is to simply ...
15
votes
In git, is it a bad idea to create a tag with the same name as a deleted branch?
You can explicitly specify whether you want a branch or a tag by using full name:
git checkout refs/heads/v1.5.2
or
git checkout refs/tags/v1.5.2
- 151
15
votes
New developer can't keep up with branch merges
By the time I'm ready to merge my branch back into develop (emphasis mine)
Handling conflicts in git merge is often simpler than in git rebase. In Git merge you can see the whole list of files that ...
14
votes
Git - What issues arise from working directly on master?
Explain to him that new features need their own development branch that can be deployed to a test environment before it is pushed to production.
Otherwise, you're in a perpetual state of half-...
- 200k
14
votes
Is it better to merge "often" or only after completion do a big merge of feature branches?
Assuming your intention is to eventually merge A, B back into master and maintain a single code base, it is never a good idea to deviate from master too far. Deviating from master for too long, ...
- 276
13
votes
How to apply environment specific changes within the classic Git branching model?
Git is not suitable for managing different variants of your code.
Git is not a deployment mechanism.
Git is just a source code management system.
One thing that gets lost when using git push as a ...
- 135k
13
votes
How do we avoid development files in the release?
I'd like to elaborate a bit on what @maciej-stachowski said:
That's not entirely correct, as far as I can tell. In GitHub, a release is a tag pointing to a specific commit - and while GitHub ...
- 233
13
votes
Accepted
Can long lived feature branches be justified by merging master into the feature branch daily
This will work only and only if: you only have 1 long-lived-feature-branch.
Let's take the following scenario: 3 developers all working on 3 different long-lived-feature-branches.
Every day they ...
- 13.3k
12
votes
Where should QA team do the testing in Gitflow branching model
Great question. I don't think there is an 'official' correct answer to this. It depends on how fast you can test.
The essential problem is that each merge, compilation or even deployment, can ...
- 78.5k
12
votes
How do you handle integrating code from multiple branches/developers each sprint?
Keep your branches short-lived (it sounds like you're already doing this).
Let your test results speak for themselves.
Don't wait for the end of the sprint.
You don't even need to subscribe to TDD ...
- 3,426
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible