git-flow

A collection of Git extensions to provide high-level repository operations for Vincent Driessen's branching model.

Getting started

For the best introduction to get started with git flow, please read Jeff Kreeftmeijer's blog post:

http://jeffkreeftmeijer.com/2010/why-arent-you-using-git-flow/

Or have a look at one of these screen casts:

• A short introduction to git-flow (by Mark Derricutt)
• On the path with git-flow (by Dave Bock)

Installing git-flow

Mac OS

If you're on a Mac and use homebrew, it's simple:

$ brew install git-flow

If you're on a Mac and use MacPorts, it's simple:

$ port install git-flow

Linux, etc.

Another easy way to install git-flow is using Rick Osborne's excellent git-flow installer, which can be run using the following command:

$ wget --no-check-certificate -q -O - https://github.com/nvie/gitflow/raw/develop/contrib/gitflow-installer.sh | sudo sh

Windows

Using Cygwin

For Windows users who wish to use the automated install, it is suggested that you install Cygwin first to install tools like git, util-linux and wget (with those three being packages that can be selected during installation). Then simply run this command from a Cygwin shell:

$ wget -q -O - https://github.com/nvie/gitflow/raw/develop/contrib/gitflow-installer.sh | sh

Using msysgit

This is much like the manual installation below, but there are additional steps required to install some extra tools that are not distributed with msysgit.

After cloning the git-flow sources from Github, also fetch the submodules:

$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update

Copy git-flow's relevant files to your msysgit installation directory:

$ mkdir /usr/local/bin
$ cp git-flow* gitflow* /usr/local/bin/
$ cp shFlags/src/shflags /usr/local/bin/gitflow-shFlags

Next up we need to borrow a couple of binaries from Cygwin. If you don't have Cygwin installed, please install it including the util-linux package. Apart from util-linux's dependencies, no other packages are required. When you finished installation, copy the following files using msysgit's Git Bash. We assume the Cygwin's default installation path in C:\cygwin.

$ cd /c/cygwin/
$ cp bin/getopt.exe /usr/local/bin/
$ cp bin/cyggcc_s-1.dll /usr/local/bin/
$ cp bin/cygiconv-2.dll /usr/local/bin/
$ cp bin/cygintl-8.dll /usr/local/bin/
$ cp bin/cygwin1.dll /usr/local/bin/

After copying the files above, you can safely uninstall your Cygwin installation by deleting the C:\cygwin directory.

Manual installation

If you prefer a manual installation, please use the following instructions. After downloading the sources from Github, also fetch the submodules:

$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update

Then, you can install git-flow, using:

$ sudo make install

By default, git-flow will be installed in /usr/local. To change the prefix where git-flow will be installed, simply specify it explicitly, using:

$ sudo make prefix=/opt/local install

Or simply point your PATH environment variable to your git-flow checkout directory.

Installation note:
git-flow depends on the availability of the command line utility getopt, which may not be available in your Unix/Linux environment. Please use your favorite package manager to install getopt. For Cygwin, install the util-linux package to get getopt. If you use apt-get as your install manager, the package name is opt.

Integration with your shell

For those who use the Bash or ZSH shell, please check out the excellent work on the git-flow-completion project by bobthecow. It offers tab-completion for all git-flow subcommands and branch names.

For Windows users, msysgit is a good starting place for installing git.

FAQ

See the FAQ section of the project Wiki.

Please help out

This project is still under development. Feedback and suggestions are very welcome and I encourage you to use the Issues list on Github to provide that feedback.

Feel free to fork this repo and to commit your additions. For a list of all contributors, please see the AUTHORS file.

Any questions, tips, or general discussion can be posted to our Google group: http://groups.google.com/group/gitflow-users

License terms

git-flow is published under the liberal terms of the BSD License, see the LICENSE file. Although the BSD License does not require you to share any modifications you make to the source code, you are very much encouraged and invited to contribute back your modifications to the community, preferably in a Github fork, of course.

Initialization

To initialize a new repo with the basic branch structure, use:

	git flow init

This will then interactively prompt you with some questions on which branches you would like to use as development and production branches, and how you would like your prefixes be named. You may simply press Return on any of those questions to accept the (sane) default suggestions.

Creating feature/release/hotfix/support branches

• To list/start/finish feature branches, use:

    git flow feature
    git flow feature start <name> [<base>]
    git flow feature finish <name>
  

  For feature branches, the <base> arg must be a commit on develop.

• To list/start/finish release branches, use:

    git flow release
    git flow release start <release> [<base>]
    git flow release finish <release>
  

  For release branches, the <base> arg must be a commit on develop.

• To list/start/finish hotfix branches, use:

    git flow hotfix
    git flow hotfix start <release> [<base>]
    git flow hotfix finish <release>
  

  For hotfix branches, the <base> arg must be a commit on master.

• To list/start support branches, use:

    git flow support
    git flow support start <release> <base>
  

  For support branches, the <base> arg must be a commit on master.

Showing your appreciation

A few people already requested it, so now it's here: a Flattr button.

Of course, the best way to show your appreciation for the original blog post or the git-flow tool itself remains contributing to the community. If you'd like to show your appreciation in another way, however, consider Flattr'ing me: