Development Guidelines

Git workflow (detailed explanation)

• two main branches - master and develop - and feature branches
  • master for stable releases only
  • develop for testing and combining new features
• create branches for new features named either after the feature purpose (e.g. geolocation, vector-tiles) or preferably the issue number (e.g. issue-121) or e.g. hotfix branch.

Example of the workflow:

1. create a new issue on GitHub to reflect the purpose of the new branch
2. create a new branch based on develop:

git checkout develop
git checkout -b feature_branch

3. develop new features and commit the changes (see commit guidelines on how to write a good commit message):

git commit -am "Add new supercool feature"

4. if other changes happened on develop branch meanwhile, you need to rebase:

git fetch -all
git rebase develop

Do not skip the rebase. It is important to do a rebase first instead of merging to keep the commit history clean.

5. resolve any conflicts during the rebase and then push the changes:

git push -u origin feature_branch

6. merge feature_branch into develop

• either by directly merging:

git checkout develop
git merge feature_branch

• or by creating a pull request for your branch if you want to have your work approved by others