4 Version Control with Git Flow

Git Flow is an ideal workflow when using Git and GitHub (an MoJ level 1 RAP component) to allow collaboration and development of new features.

It is based on three types of branch:

1. Master – the live version of the code, managed by an administrator. No editing is done on this branch.
2. Development – a staging area for testing finished features together, before getting merged into the live master branch
3. Features – these branches are used for individual new features. When a new feature is worked on, before testing it with other new features it gets developed on its own branch, which can be collaborated on by multiple people. When a feature is finished and had unit testing completed, it can be merged into the development branch.

This will also feed in to the categorisation of a release within GitHub - to learn more about using GitHub releases see Developing R packages section on managing releases of your package. For a statistical publication, each release should align with a finalised process for the production of a single publication. This means that in future we can easily revert code to its state at the point of publication and easily recreate old data if needed.

For more information, see the recorded bite-sized session Learn to love Github with Git Flow.