Git flow cheatsheet

Basic tips

• Git flow provides excellent command line help and output. Read it carefully to see what's happening...
• The OSX/Windows Client Sourcetree is an excellent git gui and provides git-flow support
• Git-flow is a merge based solution. It doesn't rebase feature branches.

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Setup

• You need a working git installation as prerequisite.
• Git flow works on OSX, Linux and Windows

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OSX

Homebrew

$ brew install git-flow-avh

Macports

$ port install git-flow-avh

Linux

$ apt-get install git-flow

Windows (Cygwin)

$ wget -q -O - --no-check-certificate https://raw.github.com/petervanderdoes/gitflow-avh/develop/contrib/gitflow-installer.sh install stable | bash

You need wget and util-linux to install git-flow.

For detailed git flow installation instructions please visit the git flow wiki.

Getting started

Git flow needs to be initialized in order to customize your project setup.

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Initialize

Start using git-flow by initializing it inside an existing git repository:

git flow init

You'll have to answer a few questions regarding the naming conventions for your branches.
It's recommended to use the default values.

Features

• Develop new features for upcoming releases
• Typically exist in developers repos only

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Start a new feature

Development of new features starting from the 'develop' branch.

Start developing a new feature with

git flow feature start MYFEATURE

This action creates a new feature branch based on 'develop' and switches to it

Finish up a feature

Finish the development of a feature. This action performs the following

• Merges MYFEATURE into 'develop'
• Removes the feature branch
• Switches back to 'develop' branch

git flow feature finish MYFEATURE

Publish a feature

Are you developing a feature in collaboration?
Publish a feature to the remote server so it can be used by other users.

git flow feature publish MYFEATURE

Getting a published feature

Get a feature published by another user.

git flow feature pull origin MYFEATURE

You can track a feature on origin by using git flow feature track MYFEATURE

Make a release

• Support preparation of a new production release
• Allow for minor bug fixes and preparing meta-data for a release

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Start a release

To start a release, use the git flow release command. It creates a release branch created from the 'develop' branch.

git flow release start RELEASE [BASE]

You can optionally supply a [BASE] commit sha-1 hash to start the release from. The commit must be on the 'develop' branch.

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It's wise to publish the release branch after creating it to allow release commits by other developers. Do it similar to feature publishing with the command:

git flow release publish RELEASE

(You can track a remote release with the
git flow release track RELEASEcommand)

Finish up a release

Finishing a release is one of the big steps in git branching. It performs several actions:

• Merges the release branch back into 'master'
• Tags the release with its name
• Back-merges the release into 'develop'
• Removes the release branch

git flow release finish RELEASE

Don't forget to push your tags withgit push --tags

Hotfixes

• Hotfixes arise from the necessity to act immediately upon an undesired state of a live production version
• May be branched off from the corresponding tag on the master branch that marks the production version.

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git flow hotfix start

Like the other git flow commands, a hotfix is started with

git flow hotfix start VERSION [BASENAME]

The version argument hereby marks the new hotfix release name. Optionally you can specify a basename to start from.

Finish a hotfix

By finishing a hotfix it gets merged back into develop and master. Additionally the master merge is tagged with the hotfix version.

git flow hotfix finish VERSION

Commands

Backlog

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• Not all available commands are covered here, only the most important ones
• You can still use git and all its commands normally as you know them, git flow is only a tooling collection
• The 'support' feature is still beta, using it is not advised
• If you'd like to supply translations I'd be happy to integrate them

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from : http://danielkummer.github.io/git-flow-cheatsheet/