If you’ve ever been in a room full of developers, you’ll know it resembles a sort of polite asylum. Everyone nods a lot, mumbles about “merge conflicts” like they’re embarrassing medical conditions, and swears allegiance to something called “Git Flow” with the solemnity of a Masonic ritual.

Now, if you’re wondering what Git Flow actually is, allow me to explain. But first, strap in. This is a tale of logic, lunacy, and a man named Kevin who once deleted the entire production database because he didn’t understand the difference between master and develop.

The Basics: A Symphony of Confusion

Imagine a group of people writing a book together. One’s working on Chapter 5, another is rewriting Chapter 3 because they “weren’t happy with the emotional arc of the squirrel,” and someone else is adding Latin footnotes to Chapter 2 — which later turn out to be in Spanish.

Chaos ensues.
Pages are lost.
The squirrel becomes a wombat.
People cry.

Enter Git Flow — the system that says:
Let’s formalise this chaos!

The Main Branches: Like Lanes on a Very Angry Motorway

  1. master – This is the Queen. Untouchable, regal, and prone to explosive tantrums if you feed it bad code. Only finished, tested, and publicly-shame-resistant work goes here.
  2. develop – Think of this as a glorified shed where developers tinker, drink too much coffee, and forget what day it is. It’s where the next release is being prepared — sort of. Maybe. If Kevin hasn’t “accidentally” overwritten it again.
  3. feature/* – These branches are like interns: young, hopeful, and destined to be absorbed or discarded. Each one represents a new idea — like adding a button, changing a colour, or replacing the entire frontend with ASCII art “for the vibes.”
  4. release/* – When develop has cooked up something vaguely usable, you spin up a release branch. It’s like sending your toddler to school in a tuxedo — clean, polished, and hopefully not about to vomit on the codebase.
  5. hotfix/* – When everything catches fire in master (which it will), you create one of these. They are the developer’s equivalent of gaffer tape and a nervous breakdown.

The Flow: A Choreographed Mess

Here’s how it goes, in theory:

  • Branch off develop to make a new feature. Name it something sensible like feature/improve-ux, or something less helpful like feature/button-magic-2.
  • Once it works (or appears to), merge it back into develop, ideally during an all-hands meeting no one wanted.
  • When enough features accumulate, spin up a release branch, ignore it for two weeks, then panic-test it over a weekend.
  • The release branch gets merged into both master and develop, creating a tangle of merge commits that resembles a spaghetti-themed horror film.
  • If a bug appears in master, a hotfix is born — screamed at, patched up, and merged into everything by someone who has since left the company.

The Result: A Beautiful Disaster

On paper, Git Flow is a symphony.
In practice, it’s avant-garde jazz played by drunks on a roundabout.

But still — it brings order to madness. It tells you where things go, how they grow, and when to quietly revoke Kevin’s permissions.

So the next time someone says, “Let’s use Git Flow,” don’t panic.
Nod. Say, “Ah yes. Much better than Git Chaos.”
Then pray the squirrel doesn’t come back in the next release.

Git Flow is a structured branching model for Git that helps manage feature development, releases, and hotfixes. Used well, it can prevent catastrophic errors and keep a team aligned. Used badly, it can create legendary horror stories and at least three kinds of Slack mutiny.

But hey — at least now you can say you understand it.
Sort of.