A branch is a named line of development that lets work diverge, remain organized, and later integrate with another line. Effective branch structures balance separation against management overhead. section 9.3
Choose branch responsibilities and rules according to team and enterprise needs:
- Use too few branches and commits become harder to segregate and manage; use too many and branch overhead becomes burdensome. section 9.3
- Define feature-branch naming, ticket-system integration, branch lifetime, granularity, release cycle, and reporting conventions. section 9.3
Two workable patterns
Gitflow uses protected master and develop branches: feature branches start from develop, receive review, and merge back; releases merge develop into master. GitHub flow simplifies this to one master branch, with reviewed and tested feature branches merged into it for deployment. section 9.3
