Git workflow and guidelines

Branches

The run control git repo has these branches:

main: Should be a stable version, fully tested. Should have a version number.
develop: Development branch. When we are not taking data, the distinction between main and develop is probably not as important. When we are taking data, we want to keep track of any changes in run control with a version number, documentation and changelog, etc. And those things should be updated when merging from develop into main.
feature/xxx, bugfix/xxx: separate branches for each feature we want to add, or bug fix. If there are multiple smaller fixes or changes, it’s probably fine to combine them in a single branch. If someone is working on multiple features at the same time, there can be multiple branches. If multiple people are working on the same feature, then they should probably share the same branch.

Workflow

When starting to work on a new feature or a bugfix, create a new branch named feature/xxx or bugfix/xxx based on the latest develop branch.
```
git fetch
git checkout -b feature/xxx develop
```
Make the changes in the branch. Feel free to commit as often as you like.
(Optional) Create a pull request on github from feature branch to develop branch. Document what’s done in this change. Code review and approvals happen here.
After this feature is done, merge into develop branch
- (Recommended) Rebase from the develop branch again, to get any new commits there. Now the new commits in the feature branch should be after all of the commits in the develop branch. Merge the new commits into the develop branch.
```
git fetch
git rebase origin/develop
git switch develop
git pull
git merge feature/xxx
git push
```
- Or if you like to have a separate merge commit available, merge without rebase.
```
git fetch
git switch develop
git pull
git merge feature/xxx
```
- Or if you don’t care about the commit history, can squash all the changes into one commit in the develop branch.
```
git fetch
git switch develop
git pull
git merge –squash feature/xxx
git commit
```
Then, the feature or bug fix branch can be safely deleted, both locally and on github.
```
git branch -d feature/xxx
git push origin --delete feature/xxx
```

When the develop branch is stable enough, it can be merged into the main branch. Then we can generate a release with a version number, update documentation, etc.

git switch main
git pull  # make sure we have latest version of main
git switch develop
git rebase main
git switch main
git merge develop
git push origin main