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Branching and Release Strategy

This guide outlines the branching and release management practices for the Meta Contract project using GitHub Flow and Semantic Versioning.

Basics of GitHub Flow​

  • main: Always maintain a stable state.
  • feature branches: Short-lived branches for new features or fixes. Created from main and merged back into main once work is complete.

Branch Naming Conventions​

  • Prefix: Use an appropriate prefix to indicate the purpose of the branch.
  • Lowercase and Hyphens: Use lowercase letters for branch names and separate words with hyphens.

Examples:​

  • feature/user-authentication
  • bugfix/fix-login-error

Semantic Versioning (SemVer)​

Semantic Versioning follows the format MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, where:

  • MAJOR: Incremented for incompatible API changes.
  • MINOR: Incremented for adding functionality in a backwards-compatible manner.
  • PATCH: Incremented for backwards-compatible bug fixes.

Versioning Workflow​

  1. New Feature Addition:

    • Increment the MINOR version.
    • Example: From v1.0.0 to v1.1.0.

  2. Bug Fix:

    • Increment the PATCH version.
    • Example: From v1.1.0 to v1.1.1.

  3. Incompatible Changes:

    • Increment the MAJOR version and reset MINOR and PATCH to zero.
    • Example: From v1.1.1 to v2.0.0.

  4. Hotfix:

    • Increment the PATCH version for urgent fixes.
    • Example: From v2.0.0 to v2.0.1.

Release Process​

Stable Releases​

  1. Create a feature branch from main for new releases.
  2. Once the release is ready, merge it back into main and tag with the new version number.

Hotfix Releases​

  1. Create a hotfix branch from main for urgent fixes.
  2. Once the hotfix is ready, merge it back into main and tag with the new version number.

Example Workflow​

Conclusion​

By adopting GitHub Flow and Semantic Versioning, we maintain a clear and consistent development and release process, facilitating easier understanding of project state and changes over time. For more details, refer to GitHub Flow.