Git Branching Practices

Discussions center on Git branching workflows, best practices for using branches instead of direct commits, the transition from 'master' to 'main' as default branch names, and GitHub's branch policies.

➡️ Stable 0.6x DevOps & Infrastructure
2,900
Comments
19
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#9158
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

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2011
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2012
93
2013
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2015
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2016
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2018
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2020
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2022
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Keywords

GH CI IDK NB FU branch branches git master main commit mercurial merge repo commits

Sample Comments

jamesgpearce Mar 27, 2014 View on HN

NB: this is a branch, rather than a fork.

cerved Jul 17, 2023 View on HN

what do you mean "use Git branches"?

teen May 26, 2016 View on HN

developer branches never make sense

justincormack Oct 25, 2024 View on HN

Github werent terribly happy with the number of branches we created for this type of use case at one point.

hoseja Sep 24, 2020 View on HN

What if you name a branch in your repo "master"?

fullstackwife Mar 2, 2025 View on HN

Whatever you do, always do it on a branch!

thebean11 Jul 29, 2021 View on HN

Master/main? It's a single branch workflow.

viraptor Jan 22, 2023 View on HN

Why not use branches for that? That's often for people to it.

Ar-Curunir Oct 1, 2020 View on HN

That tooling is wrong: you could always change the default branch on git.

buu700 Jul 7, 2021 View on HN

I'm a developer who maintains repositories with master branches. It is exactly about me.