What is the master branch and release branch for?

git git-flow
newBike picture newBike · Dec 24, 2013 · Viewed 51k times · Source

My English is not good enough to understand the explanation of git flow

For my understanding.

Master branch is for ready-product which can be downloaded on the market by users.

But there is an release branches I have no ideas theses branches is release for whom ?

Release for customers ? or for QA?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/appleboy/5488984404/

Answer

minas picture minas · Dec 24, 2013

simplified git workflow

Once develop has acquired enough features for a release (or a predetermined release date is approaching), you fork a release branch off of develop. Creating this branch starts the next release cycle, so no new features can be added after this point.Only bug fixes, documentation generation, and other release-oriented tasks should go in this branch(which includes testing also). Once it's ready to ship, the release gets merged into master and tagged with a version number. In addition, it should be merged back into develop, which may have progressed since the release was initiated.

Using a dedicated branch to prepare releases makes it possible for one team to polish the current release while another team continues working on features for the next release. It also creates well-defined phases of development (e.g., it's easy to say, “this week we're preparing for version 4.0” and to actually see it in the structure of the repository).

More info here for branches

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