Gitflow is a popular Git branching workflow designed to facilitate collaboration by streamlining the development process of software releases.

It involves the use of both permanent and temporary branches, and dictates how branches should be set up and merged.

It is generally used for projects with a scheduled release cycle and for the DevOps best practice of continuous delivery.

The main and develop branches

Gitflow uses two permanent branches:

• The main branch, used for integrating official tagged releases.

• The develop branch, derived from the main branch, used for integrating the work done on temporary feature branches.

The main difference between these two branches resides in the fact that the develop branch will contain the full history of the project, meaning all of the development commits, whereas the main branch will only contain a condensed version of it.

💡 Tip: The objective is to keep the main and develop branches as in sync as possible throughout the whole development lifecycle.

Workflow overview

Step 1: Initializing and connecting the repository