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Lab651 Process

Naming Branches

Naming Branches

Section titled “Naming Branches”

Unique Core Branches

Section titled “Unique Core Branches”

There are two core unique branches whose names should not be changed and have special usage:

  • main - This is the main project branch.  This branch should be stable at all times and nobody should submit to it.  It will be merged into by an approved release branch.
  • develop - This is the main development branch.  Engineers should be able to pull from this branch and have a stable development copy off of the current release.  This branch can only be merged into by reviewed and tested feature and bug branches. 

Named Core Branches

Section titled “Named Core Branches”

In some projects, there are two more core branches

  • release/major.minor.0 -  This is an official release of software that went past QA to UAT (user acceptance testing).  Pulling from this branch will be considered a stable representation.  If there are issues found in UAT, then a hotfix/ branch should be created.  An example name is “release/1.3.0”.
  • hotfix/major.minor.patch - This is an official fix for a released branch that went past QA to UAT.  Pulling from this branch will be considered a stable representation.  An example name is “hotfix/1.3.3”.

Include a Ticket Identifier

Section titled “Include a Ticket Identifier”

When Jira is used (99% of the time), include a ticket number in the branch name.  This will help tie it back to our board and anyone looking at branches can easily go back to the core information.  And example name is “abc-123_add_login_password_filtering”.

Include Intent of the Branch

Section titled “Include Intent of the Branch”
  • feature/ - This is a feature branch for a feature being implemented.  An example name is “feature/abc-123_add_login_password_filtering”
  • bug/ - This is a bug branch for implementing a bug fix.  And example name is “bug/abc-456_fixing_login_password_filtering”

Use Dashes and Underscores

Section titled “Use Dashes and Underscores”

Use dashes (”-”) for ticket numbers and underscores (”_”) to separate words.  Don’t use kebab, run-on, Pascal or camel-case. 

  • Do: this_is_using_underscores, abc-123_this_is_using_underscores
  • Don’t do: abc123thisIsNotUsingUnderscores and thisisnotusingunderscores and this-is-not-using-underscores

Do Not

Section titled “Do Not”
  • Name branches as simply the ticket number.
Section titled “Related”