how do i create a support branch?

[Chef Hoobajoob]

Does sourcetree support the git flow support branching model? What are the options in SourceTree for businesses with important customers that stay on old release lines for a long time rather than upgrading to newer releases?

[Johannes Kilian · Accepted solution]

"Support branches" are not supported - see Feature Request: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN-999 (from 2013)

You have to do this manually, as @Tim Crall suggested.

As git flow is just a convention you might apply git flow on each base branch. Normally the base branch is master - in your case you might have more than one base branch: each of your support branches can be used as base branch for git flow on this branch as well, having a own "develop" branch and subsequent git flow branches from each base branch ... - but you have do this manually (no support by sourcetree)

[Tim Crall]

You can manage branches anyway you want to in SourceTree.  You can implement git flow just by obeying its rules when you create and merge branches, but SourceTree also has specific git flow support (https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/08/01/smart-branching-with-sourcetree-and-git-flow/)

SourceTree allows you to create and merge branches when and if  you want, so there's not really anything special it needs to do to support long-running support branches - just create a new branch and don't merge it.

[Chef Hoobajoob]

I'm aware that we can branch however we like manually.

I'm specifically asking about the scope of SourceTree's git flow support. Git flow defines a specific set of branch/merge operations for what it calls 'support branches':

https://github.com/nvie/gitflow/wiki/Command-Line-Arguments#support

However, I couldn't find any such options in SourceTree's git flow dialog. So, I am wondering whether it is currently supported, planned for a future release, or just not on SourceTree's radar at all.