Branch Name

Why

Git offers flexible branching strategies which are very useful for collaboration and CI/CD automation. However, using inconsistent naming conventions can lead to confusion and difficulty maintaining codebases.

Important: No one is allowed to push directly to main branches like main, staging, development, or production. These branches can only be updated via Pull Request.

Branch Types

There are two kinds of branches: Regular Branches and Temporary Branches.

Regular Branches

These are permanent branches in the repository:

  • main: The production branch. Always stable. No direct commits allowed. Changes must come from PRs from other branches such as staging.
  • staging: Used for QA, UAT, and automation testing before changes are pushed to production.
  • development: The default development branch where all code is integrated. Prefer PRs over direct commits.

Other permanent branches may be added (e.g., for specific environments or platforms). When doing so:

  • Keep names short: ubuntu20, not for-server-with-ubuntu-version-20
  • Use dashes - for separators
  • Ensure it’s truly permanent-otherwise, use a temporary branch instead

Temporary Branches

Created for specific tasks and removed after merging. Use the format:

<group>/<task-id>-description

Group Prefixes

Group Purpose
feat New features
bugfix Bug fixes or QA findings
hotfix Urgent fixes for production
experiment Tryouts with new libraries, tools, or architectures
wip Work-in-progress that may be incomplete or shared with others

Task ID

  • Include task ID if available (e.g., JIRA ticket)
  • Use dash - to separate multiple IDs
  • Example: feat/DEMO-1234-DEMO-4567-login

Description Rules

  • Use lowercase only: bugfix/login-error, not BugFix/LoginError
  • Be concise: feat/operational-hours, not feat/implementing-store-operational-hours
  • Use nouns: feat/ldap-integration, not feat/integrates-ldap
  • Use dashes - as word separators

Examples

Use Case Branch Name
Feature for login screen feat/DEMO-1234-login
Fix for broken query bugfix/DEMO-5678-invalid-query
Hotfix for payment crash hotfix/DEMO-9012-payment-crash
WIP for redesign wip/redesign-ui
Experimental refactor experiment/new-cache-strategy
Multi-ticket feature feat/DEMO-1111-DEMO-2222-store-summary