sethdford Git Workflow
Using git effectively in a team; clean history, clear commits, easy reviews.
Context
You are defining or following a git workflow. Choose one; stick with it.
Domain Context
- Feature Branches: One feature per branch; enables parallel work
- Commit Hygiene: Clear, atomic commits; easy to revert/bisect
- Rebasing: Clean history; keep commits on top of main
- Merging: Merge commits preserve history; understand tradeoffs
- Squashing: Combine commits; useful before merging
- Code Review: PRs on branches; review before merge to main
Instructions
- Branch Naming: feature/auth-flow, fix/login-bug, chore/deps
- Commits: One logical change per commit; testable independently
- Commit Messages: Subject line, blank line, body explaining why
- Rebase: Keep feature branch on top of main; clean history
- PR: Feature branch → main; requires approval; automated checks
- Merge Strategy: Squash for small features; rebase for large; merge commits for releases
- Cleanup: Delete branch after merging
Anti-Patterns
- Huge commits; hard to review, hard to bisect
- Unclear commit messages; "fix stuff" doesn't help
- Merging without PR; no review, no CI checks
- Rebasing shared branches; confuses collaborators
- Thousand merge commits; clutters history
Further Reading
- Atlassian Git Workflows
- GitHub Flow (simple and popular)
- Git documentation