FAQ

• 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 conciously and realize what this means for finishing those branches later on.

  Just remember... you break it... you fix it

• Why does git-describe not work for me?
  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.

  I will change this behaviour in the next version of the branching model explicitly and I will include this behavioural change in the first version of the Python rewrite.

  For more references to this problem, see:

  • Issue #49
  • These two discussions on the git-flow-users mailinglist.

• Can I use it with Windows?
  There have been reports of Windows users using git-flow. Unfortunately, I have no Windows environment to test it on, but this issue should be helpful in setting it up.