FAQ

• Why git-flow CJS?

There are a number of outstanding issues and pull requests open on both gitflow-avh and on gitflow. This "edition" of git-flow hopes to address some of those issues and pull requests.

• Why a separate edition of git-flow?

  As we were in need of the implementation of hooks and filters in git-flow, we wrote a patch for the original git-flow. After 5 months the patch still wasn't implemented and we decided to focus our work on creating the AVH Edition. Because of the rewrite we did it seems very likely that the patches for new features and bugfixes we create for the AVH Edition are not compatible with the original git-flow.

• Can I still do manual branches and merges when I use git-flow?

  Of course you can. git-flow does not forbid you to keep using vanilla Git commands!

  So if you want to merge master into develop for whatever reason you want to, you can safely do so without breaking git-flow compatibility. Do you want to manually merge a feature branch X into another feature branch Y? Not a problem. As long as you do it consciously and realize what this means for finishing those branches later on.

• Why does git-describe not work for me?

  It works with the AVH version of gitflow. Instead of merging the release branch back into the develop branch, the tag, if given, is merged back into the develop branch.

  When finishing release and hotfix branches, that branch's HEAD is first merged into master and then into develop. It is not the resulting new merge commit from master that is merged back into develop. This means that a linear path from the new develop branch to the new master commit is not created. Even worse, a linear path is created from the new develop branch to the previous master commit. Although unintended, this is simply an effect of using the current branching rules.

  When using git-describe in these cases, you can get very confusing and misleading results, since git-describe scans the current commits linear history for the most recent tag it finds, which will always be the previous tag.

• Can I use it with Windows?

  Yes, see Installing on Windows

• What is the intended use of the support subcommand?

  Long term support of old releases is a use case that not covered in the original description of Git Flow. You might for instance have customers running old releases that still require bugfixes and maintenance, even though newer versions have long since replaced them. The git flow support command creates branches that are not supposed to be merged back into master. More info: SO