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automatic merging from master to release branches

Rob Ormond

Hi,

We follow gitflow branching model here, which means master is our current production code, and we create release/* branches for things as they are going through QA before release. When a version is pushed to production we merge the release/* branch into master, and delete the release branch.

Now, when we have a hotfix applied directly to master, it automatically merges into our develop branch, but not any release branches.

Following gitflow, I would expect any hotfix applied to master would get automatically merged into any release branches, and develop.

Is there a reason it isn't doing this?

Cheers,

Rob

Accepted answers

Kristy

Hi @Rob Ormond,

I'm a little bit confused because in one sentence you say you delete the release branch and then in the other sentence you say you want something to merge into the release branch. Do the release branches still exist or were they deleted?

That aside, you cannot have master merge back upstream into your release branches. The point of having the release branch separation is that downstream release branches are always *ahead* of the upstream release branches. This is so that new features and potential bugs from newer versions don't accidentally find their way onto old versions.

When you have a hotfix, you need to find the version that it originated. You should then create a branch from that release branch to create the fix, and merge the fix to that release branch. If you have automerge enabled in your branch model then merging to that release branch will propagate the chnages downstream to the later release branches and eventually to master etc.

Hope that helps,

Kristy

All comments

Kristy

Hi @Rob Ormond,

Hope that helps,

Kristy

Rob Ormond

Hi Kirsty,

Sorry I wasn't clear.

When we do a release, we merge the release branch into master and delete the release branch, but at that time there will be 1 or 2 other release branches (for future versions) that are in QA.

So master is always production code, release branches are what is in QA (and there may be multiple of these). This is how I understand gitflow to work.

If we leave the release branches around after we merge the code into master, and create hotfixes for production code from the release branch, then the opposite problem exists where the hotfix won't get merged into master automatically. It'll be in the release branch, and any other release branches that exist that are newer (higher version), and develop, but not master, which is actually meant to be production code. So either way we'll need to do a manual merge for hotfixes.

I hope that is clearer now?

Cheers,

Rob

Kristy

Hi Rob,

That makes more sense now, thanks.

I made a mistake when I said that the release branches will eventually merge to master. It does for my team because our configuration is that master is the development branch and we have no 'production' branch.

However, for your configuration that is not the case.

I've checked the behaviour of Bitbucket Server and found that if your configuration is roughly like this:

Screen Shot 2018-09-14 at 10.57.55 am.png

Then the resulting automerge will look something like this:

Screen Shot 2018-09-14 at 11.00.40 am.png

Note that it does not merge into the production branch (master) here.

This is intended behaviour as explained in BSERV-9740 because our interpretation of GitFlow is that merging changes to master is an explicit step should be taken only when a new release is cut.

In the case of a hotfix, you're likely going to want to cut a release straight away - but the timing of when that happens is up to you and shouldn't be dictated by a tool. For all Bitbucket knows, you may have multiple hotfixes that you want to release at the same time in which case you would wait for all of them to merge to develop before merging to master to cut the release.

Hope this helps. Let me know if anything I've said isn't clear,

Kristy

Bitbucket Server Developer

Rob Ormond

Thanks, what you are saying makes sense.

Is there a feature request for optional auto merging? Eg, instead of just showing up what it is going to merge into, allow the user to choose which branches it should auto merge into, maybe with some defaults of what it is doing now (downstream release branches, develop, etc)

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