Git flow post-initialization issue recovery

Question

I recently removed my development branch using git branch -D development in order to clear some commits it had that I did not want to preserve between feature commits.

The result was that finishing the (still present and active) feature branch I had open through the Git Flow button caused a complaint that git flow had not yet been initialized (it had).

This resulted in the rather annoying need to track down its real location within the SourceTree.app/Contents/ hierarchy and run git flow init again by hand.

Ideally Source Tree should automatically attempt to recover from detectable and straightforward git flow init issues such as this, saving people the lengthy run-around.

Steve Huckle1 · Answer

If you go to Sourcetree Settings via the gear icon on the right-hand side of the app', then click on Edit Config File, you'll see what branches etc. gitflow expects. In your case, you could have probably just recreated the local development branch, and gitflow would have worked as expected.

johnbarnaby · Answer

@Kieran Senior, thanks for the clarification which makes sense from my previous comment.

KieranA · Answer

The only reason we say to do it from within SourceTree is because people often use different scripts from the one SourceTree uses which creates inconsistencies. It's not because we're trying to coerce users into using SourceTree.

Technically you could do it from both the terminal and from SourceTree provided your git-flow configurations matched so the branch prefixes matched correctly. Otherwise, one script would create a different naming convention to the other meaning the terminal and SourceTree would produce different output for the same function.

Hope that helps