What Git Flow is

Git Flow is a branching model proposed by Vincent Driessen in 2010. It defines five branch types - main, develop, feature/*, release/*, hotfix/* - and rules for how they interact. It suits products with explicit release cycles and parallel maintenance of older versions.

The five branches

• main - holds production-ready code. Every commit is a release.
• develop - integration branch for the next release.
• feature/* - off develop, merged back to develop.
• release/* - off develop, merged into main and back to develop. Final stabilisation.
• hotfix/* - off main, merged into main and develop. Production fixes.

A feature lifecycle

git checkout develop
git pull
git checkout -b feature/oauth-login
# ...work, commit, push...
git checkout develop
git merge --no-ff feature/oauth-login
git push origin develop
git branch -d feature/oauth-login

--no-ff preserves the merge commit so the feature is visible as a unit.

A release

git checkout develop
git checkout -b release/1.4.0
# bump version, run final tests, fix bugs only
git checkout main
git merge --no-ff release/1.4.0
git tag -a v1.4.0 -m "Release 1.4.0"
git checkout develop
git merge --no-ff release/1.4.0
git branch -d release/1.4.0

A hotfix

git checkout main
git checkout -b hotfix/1.4.1
# fix the bug
git checkout main
git merge --no-ff hotfix/1.4.1
git tag -a v1.4.1 -m "Hotfix 1.4.1"
git checkout develop
git merge --no-ff hotfix/1.4.1
git branch -d hotfix/1.4.1

The git-flow CLI

The git-flow extension automates the bookkeeping:

brew install git-flow-avh
git flow init
git flow feature start oauth-login
git flow feature finish oauth-login
git flow release start 1.4.0
git flow release finish 1.4.0

When Git Flow fits

• Versioned, downloadable software (desktop apps, libraries).
• Parallel maintenance of multiple supported versions.
• Long QA cycles between feature freeze and release.

When Git Flow does not fit

• Continuously deployed web apps - the develop branch becomes redundant.
• Small teams without a dedicated release process.
• Trunk-based engineering cultures.

Driessen himself revised his recommendation in 2020: for web apps with continuous delivery, prefer GitHub Flow or trunk-based development. Git Flow remains valuable when its assumptions actually hold.

Common pitfalls

• Forgetting to merge a hotfix back to develop - the bug returns next release.
• Long-lived release branches drift from develop, accumulating conflicts.
• Treating develop as if it were main, deploying from it.

Pick Git Flow with eyes open. If it fits, it is a clear, teachable model.