Sane Branch Management of Version Control Systems for Teams

[NOTE : This is still a 'draft', please point out mistakes and suggest changes/improvements]
Some time back Nagaraj Mali asked a question about 'best practices for repository branch management' on one of our whatsapp groups. This is commom query. 'bad branching strategy' or 'no strategy about branching' are very common mistakes in project teams. These mistakes can seriously impact the teams productivity and quality. Unfortunately very few manager/scrum masters or tech leads really understand devastating impact of 'bad version control practices'. In this blog, I am attempting to explain my views and logic behind various practices that I recommend.

Mistake : Too many branches

A developer need to understand the difference between a 'branch' and a 'tag'. Many times teams use 'branch' where tag is sufficient. 'branch' is an 'active line' of development. Common practice is product teams is to support 3 previous versions (i.e major releases) for bug fixes and one new release'. For example your current release is Ver10 and you may supporting major Versions9, 8 and 7. Essentially you have 4 'lines of development'. Then you need 4 branches. Ideally you should checkout 'only' the  branch that you are working on. There is no need to checkout all branches. Since 'branches' represent 'live lines of development', once you stop supporting a particular major release, you should 'delete' the branch for that release. Typically you will have 4 to 6 branches and many/many tags.

Mistake : Creating new branch for every minor release

Assume a major release is 'version 9'. Then 'version 9.1' is developed on 'version 9'  branch ONLY. Remember 'Version 9' is the supported major release and 'live development line'. Version 9.1 is usually a 'NOT live development line'. Any code changes/bug fixes for Version 9.1 should be developed in 'Version 9' branch'

Common complaint : We spend long time in merging.

This is another symptom of bad branching and bad practices followed by team. Consider following branch scenarios.

1. Release branches for past releases
   
   Lets assume that new releases are developed in 'master' and team is supporting 2 previous release 'Version1' and 'version2'. Now team have done a bug fix in 'Version1'. Obviously customers will expect that same bug fix is available on 'patch release on Version2' and also available when new Version3 becomes available. So every day branches must be merged 'upstream'. i.e. merge Version 1 commits to Verson 2. And merge version 2 commits to 'master'. If you get any merge failure fix them. Daily changes are typically small and can be easily merged. This simple practice ensure that time required to do merges are drastically reduced and bug introduced because of merge problems are almost entirely eliminated.
   
   
2. Feature branches
   
   Many teams create 'feature' branches for every new feature or bug fix. However, they don't delete the feature branch one the feature development is over. At end of 'feature' development feature branch must be merged into 'master' and then delete the feature branch. It is best to use 'git flow' plugin/workflow for working on feature branches.
   
   Typical feature branch flow will be 
   • create feature branch from 'master' (so 'parent branch' will be 'master')
   • keep making changes and commiting in feature branch. Its ok to push feature branch.
   • every day merge 'parent branch' to 'feature' branch. This way any changes to 'parent' branch done by other developers are available to you and any conflicting changes are detected early.
   • once the feature is done, merge the 'feature branch' to 'parent branch' (usually 'master'). Since you are regularly merging the 'master' to 'feature', you will not see any conflicts when you merge 'feature' to master. Now delete the feature branch
   
   In both scenarios 'key' is the regular (preferably every day) merge from 'release branch' to master' or 'master to feature' branch.

Remember It is OK to delete a branch

Remember in version control there is nothing like 'permanent delete'. When a branch is deleted, you will not see it 'branches list'. But that does not mean all the history of such branch is also deleted. Recommended practices is to create a 'tag' from branch and then delete the branch. This will keep the history intact. It will also allow to restore a branch from the tag, if you need to do some critical bug fix in an older (now unsupported) release

Bottomline

Remember 'version control' is 'productivity tool' for the development team and NOT just a backup tool. Learn how to take advantage of the version control system and you will see signficant increase in productivity of your team.  Start by defining policy for 'branch creation/branch deletion and daily merge'.