Effects of Using SourceTree Git-Flow on a non-Git-Flow project

[Tim Ahrens]

I am using SourceTree in Windows, with a group that is not set up for Git-Flow, and I want to use Gti-Flow locally. They have a "develop branch", but their production branch is named "trunk". I don't want to do anything to mess up their repository, but I want to use Git-Flow locally to manage my feature development. When I click the "Git-Flow" icon in SourceTree, it gives me a dialog entitled: "Initialise repository for Git Flow". If I put "trunk" in place of "master", will that have an effect on THEIR repository, or will the effect be just local?

[stevestreeting]

All effects will be local, except if you push changes to their branches. The 'master' branch is where releases are merged into, so if you put 'trunk' in there and then used the 'finish' option on a release or hotfix, then it would merge your release / hotfix branch into trunk and that would affect their trunk if you pushed those changes. If you only used features, then your feature branches will be being merged into develop in the standard configuration, again those would appear if you pushed them. However any git-flow configuration remains local only.

[Tim Ahrens]

I will only be doing feature branches and when I finish, they generally merge into develop, so I was thinking that master (trunk in their case), should not be effected.

[stevestreeting]

Yes, if you only use feature branches then master/trunk won't be merged to, only develop. It's releases and hotfixes that merge to master.