Code Flow and Branches¶
Introduction¶
The zephyr Git repository has three types of branches:
- master
- Which contains the latest state of development
- topic-*
- Topic branches that are used for shared development of a new feature
- vx.y-branch
- Branches which track maintenance releases based on a major release
Development in topic branches before features go to mainline allows teams to work independently on a subsystem or a feature, improves efficiency and turnaround time, and encourages collaboration and streamlines communication between developers.
Changes submitted to a development topic branch can evolve and improve incrementally in a branch, before they are submitted to the mainline tree for final integration.
By dedicating an isolated branch to complex features, it’s possible to initiate in-depth discussions around new additions before integrating them into the official project.
Roles and Responsibilities¶
Development topic branch owners have the following responsibilities:
- Use the infrastructure and tools provided by the project (GitHub, Git)
- Review changes coming from team members and request review from branch owners when submitting changes.
- Keep the branch in sync with upstream and update on a regular basis.
- Push changes frequently to upstream using the following methods:
- GitHub pull requests: for example, when reviews have not been done in the local branch (one-man branch).
- Merge requests: When a set of changes has been done in a local branch and has been reviewed and tested in a topic branch.