DEV Community

Discussion on: why branching on git is wrong

 
peoplearmy009 profile image
Peopelearmy009

I understand the importance of code visibility and this can easily be done with feature branches via a pull request that does not get completed until code is reviewed and accepted. Direct commits and push to development does not fix issues of poorly implemented code. A developer can easily lose months of work because they committed to their local development branch that tracks origin and then push all their work once. The issue here is that you now are faced with an issue where that code is now in development and you have no chance to deny or approve it. This results in higher need to roll back commits on your development branch as opposed to only accepting code that meets requirements.

Thread Thread
 
megawattz profile image
Walt Howard • Edited

You have to prevent people from committing to master willy-nilly. Either make master a protected branch and require the tech lead to approve any merges, or have an automated regression test that runs before merging to master. At least make sure it compiles, or runs even a small "smoke test" (for non-compiled languages)

If a problem comes up, the person who caused the problem has to fix it, and it hasn't polluted the working master. The simplicity of that is probably too much for some people.