Following git-flow how should you handle a hotfix of an earlier release?

Question

If you try to follow the git-flow branching model, documented here and with tools here, how should you handle this situation:

You have made a 1.0 release and a 2.0 release. Then you need to make a hotfix for 1.0. You create a hotfix branch off the 1.0 tag and implement the fix there. But what then?

Normally you would merge to master and put a 1.1 release tag there. But you can't merge 1.1 to a point after 2.0 on master.

I guess you could put the release tag on the hotfix branch, but that would create a permanent branch beside the master that would contain a release tag. Is that the right way?

Answer 1

It seems that there is a concept of a "support" branch in git flow. This is used to add a hotfix to an earlier release.

This thread has more information, with these examples:

git checkout 6.0 git checkout -b support/6.x git checkout -b hotfix/6.0.1 

... make your fix, then:

git checkout support/6.x git merge hotfix/6.0.1 git branch -d hotfix/6.0.1 git tag 6.0.1 

or using git flow commands

git flow support start 6.x 6.0 git flow hotfix start 6.0.1 support/6.x 

... make changes then:

git flow hotfix finish 6.0.1 

Answer 2

Interesting question! The flow you linked assumes master can track production. That only works if production versions are strictly increasing. That's typically true for a website which has only one production version.

If you have to maintain multiple production versions, one branch to track production is not enough. A solution is not to use master to track production. Instead, use branches like release1, release2, etc.

In this approach, you may not even need a hotfix branch. You could fix the problem on the release1 branch. When the fix is good enough, create a release1.1 tag on the release1 branch.