Creating a Release from a Feature Branch

Assumptions

  • All changes to be included in the release have been made on the feature-branch
  • We release from the master branch by merging feature-branch into the master branch
  • A feature release (e.g. X.Y.0) gets a branch of its own off of the master

Steps

  1. Commit all your changes on the feature-branch

  2. Merge the master branch into the feature-branch and get all conflicts resolved.

    This is in case any changes were made in the master branch since the point at which the feature-branch was branched off from the master

    $ git checkout feature-branch $ git merge master

  3. Merge the feature-branch into the master branch and squash the changes into one big change set.

    This is to get the feature-branch changes into the master for use in the release and to ensure that these changes are included in any subsequent feature change branches. (Since feature change branches should be branches off of the master.) The squashing means that all the changes for the current feature will be under one commit comment.

    $ git checkout master $ git merge --squash feature-branch

  4. Fix up the version.txt file -- make it say master

    $ git_current_branch > version.txt $ get add version.txt

    Note: git_current_branch should be an alias defined as:

    alias git_current_branch='git symbolic-ref -q HEAD --short'

  5. Commit all changes to the master branch. This is the one commit for all of the feature-related changes

    $ git commit -m "Big description of feature branch changes"

    Now all the changes you made in feature-branch are in the master branch.

  6. Push everything to the origin (GitHub)

    $ git push origin --all

  7. Remove the local feature-branch whose changes you\'ve now merged and committed to the master branch.

    $ git branch -D feature-branch

  8. Remove the remote feature-branch from the origin repository (GitHub)

    $ git push origin --delete feature-branch

  9. Create a release version in a release branch

    $ git checkout master $ git branch release/v1.7.0 # substitute your intended release number $ git checkout release/v1.7.0 $ git_current_branch > version.txt $ git add version.txt $ git commit -m "Created v1.7.0" $ git tag -a v1.7.0 -m "Tagging v1.7.0" $ git push --tags origin release/v1.7.0

  10. Go to https://github.com, log in, and create a release from the tag

    Releases --> Draft a new release --> Select tag

    • Provide a Title: e.g. \"Multirun ICA+fIX on 7T Retinotopy Data\"
    • Provide a Description: e.g. \"This release is intended to be used for running Multirun ICA+FIX processing on 7T Retinotopy data\"
    • Publish the release

  11. Make sure you don\'t leave your local git repository with the release branch checked out.

    You do not want to make further changes to that branch. If you are making a bugfix release (a final point release, e.g. v1.7.1 or v1.7.2), you will create a feature/bugfix branch off of the release branch.

    $ git checkout master

  12. Make sure all the changes in the release branch are merged into the master branch and the master branch is ready to use as a starting point for future changes.

    bash $ git merge release/v1.7.0 # substitute your release number $ git_current_branch > version.txt $ git add version.txt $ git commit -m "Updated version.txt" $ git push origin --all

  13. Further changes should be done in a new feature branch, not on the master branch.