I'd say he does understand git, but simply chooses to use it differently. In my company we do not use feature branches, unless absolutely necessary, which would mean a big rewrite of a considerable part of the system, where you just can't roll out changes progressively. It happened like 3-4 times in my 3 years of working here.
The issue he brought up with feature branches, where people work in separation from each other, is pretty substantial (not unsolvable, but still). Imagine you need something from another feature branch, but it will not be merged until a couple of days, because there something else needs finishing on that branch. And also, that required thing is based on lots of other changes made on that specific branch, so you can't just cherrypick it. Now what, rebase on a partially finished feature branch? Manually copy paste the code? Now, what if you need things from more than one feature branch?
In my experience, it is best to simply compartmentalize changes in a way, where a PR to master branch contains a small subset of changes that does not break anything. That way the changes are incorporated by the rest of the team and they can provide you with an actual feedback and vice versa. I know that is not always possible, but I would advocate for this approach in most cases where it is applicable.
I'd say he does understand git, but simply chooses to use it differently.
I cannot agree more with the notion that there are many 'correct' ways to use git.
Imagine you need something from another feature branch, but it will not be merged until a couple of days, because there something else needs finishing on that branch. And also, that required thing is based on lots of other changes made on that specific branch, so you can't just cherrypick it. Now what, rebase on a partially finished feature branch? Manually copy paste the code? Now, what if you need things from more than one feature branch?
In the scenario you're talking about, where Developer A needs some code from Developer B, but that code has dependencies on unfinished code that is not ready to be incorporated with master, I would argue that having that code on master instead does not improve the situation. If the unfinished code were on master, it would imply one of two things; Master is broken, or you're using feature flags. If you're using feature flags, you would have been able to cherry-pick the necessary code onto a separate branch and merge to master.
I would argue, however, that it's the development process that matters here, not the git workflow. If you're consistently finding that you need work from other features in order to complete your features, there are probably other things you should consider: Are your features broken down enough? It could be the case that the work needed by both features should have been done and released in a previous task, as a prerequisite for the two tasks that need it.
The team I'm working on uses feature branches, and also deploys to production multiple times a day. There are other teams who do not use feature branches, but still have many of the issues feature branches are suggested to create. At the end of the day, I think most of the problems brought up in this article and in this comment section are not caused by feature branches.
Have your developers commit their unfinished branches to the repo (but not master), or use forks, then you have access to their code. Easy. Seriously, I push my branch to remote repo often because there's almost nothing in life worse than losing code (except maybe root canal). So if I screw up my personal work computer, delete something or the hard disk goes bad, I have my latest work safe on a remote repo.
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I'd say he does understand git, but simply chooses to use it differently. In my company we do not use feature branches, unless absolutely necessary, which would mean a big rewrite of a considerable part of the system, where you just can't roll out changes progressively. It happened like 3-4 times in my 3 years of working here.
The issue he brought up with feature branches, where people work in separation from each other, is pretty substantial (not unsolvable, but still). Imagine you need something from another feature branch, but it will not be merged until a couple of days, because there something else needs finishing on that branch. And also, that required thing is based on lots of other changes made on that specific branch, so you can't just cherrypick it. Now what, rebase on a partially finished feature branch? Manually copy paste the code? Now, what if you need things from more than one feature branch?
In my experience, it is best to simply compartmentalize changes in a way, where a PR to master branch contains a small subset of changes that does not break anything. That way the changes are incorporated by the rest of the team and they can provide you with an actual feedback and vice versa. I know that is not always possible, but I would advocate for this approach in most cases where it is applicable.
I cannot agree more with the notion that there are many 'correct' ways to use git.
In the scenario you're talking about, where Developer A needs some code from Developer B, but that code has dependencies on unfinished code that is not ready to be incorporated with master, I would argue that having that code on master instead does not improve the situation. If the unfinished code were on master, it would imply one of two things; Master is broken, or you're using feature flags. If you're using feature flags, you would have been able to cherry-pick the necessary code onto a separate branch and merge to master.
I would argue, however, that it's the development process that matters here, not the git workflow. If you're consistently finding that you need work from other features in order to complete your features, there are probably other things you should consider: Are your features broken down enough? It could be the case that the work needed by both features should have been done and released in a previous task, as a prerequisite for the two tasks that need it.
The team I'm working on uses feature branches, and also deploys to production multiple times a day. There are other teams who do not use feature branches, but still have many of the issues feature branches are suggested to create. At the end of the day, I think most of the problems brought up in this article and in this comment section are not caused by feature branches.
This is a great point, thank you.
Have your developers commit their unfinished branches to the repo (but not master), or use forks, then you have access to their code. Easy. Seriously, I push my branch to remote repo often because there's almost nothing in life worse than losing code (except maybe root canal). So if I screw up my personal work computer, delete something or the hard disk goes bad, I have my latest work safe on a remote repo.