How do we QA code on a separate branch

Question

The Stash info says, for example, "Stash supports popular distributed workflows based on forking or branching, offering users and teams a choice of how to best work with code in a distributed enterprise environment."

We see the advantage to working on new features in a separate branch. What is not clear to me, however, is how a developer's code can be sent to a QA tester if it is off on its own branch.

What am I missing here?

cofarrell · Accepted Answer

Hi George,

I'm afraid the answer to that question will depend on how easy it is to deploy your code to a running server. For example if a QA person can checkout your branch from Git on their machine and run a simple script then that's possibly the easiest way to test a branch. That's certainly what we do on the Stash team. You might also have a CI build that runs on the branch that can deploy to an extra/spare server, possibly in a virtualized environment. At a previous place I've worked we had a limited/specific number of 'testing' branches which could be merged to and deployed automatically for testing before being accepted.  Finally, you could also get your developers to run an instance of the server and get QA to test it there, although that might cause bottlenecks in your process.

Having QA test things locally is the ideal solution from my experience, as it gives you the most flexibility and freedom, but may not be possible (or easy) depending on your environment.

I hope that gives you some ideas.

Charles

PS. You might have already seen our documentation around the different Git workflows, but just in case you might be intersted.