In which branch should a beta release be tagged?

Question

In which branch should a beta release be tagged according to git-flow?

We have a release branch for preparing Version x.0.0, but before releasing x.0.0 we want to release a beta (x.0.0-beta). Should the release branch be merged into master in this case and then be tagged x.0.0-beta on master or should this beta release be tagged on the release branch for x.0.0?

Additional question: Is the procedure for a release candidate (x.0.0-rc1) the same as for beta?

Answer 1

I would suggest that you would place the x.0.0-beta tag on the release branch, once you are ready to ship the beta version, somewhere. You might actually want to go further and tag it with x.0.0-beta0001 so that you can have multiple beta version, as required.

Once you move closer to the release, you would tag the release branch with the x.0.0-rc1 as required as well.

Then, once you merge the release branch into master, and ultimately back into develop, you would tag the master branch with the final version number.

This approach was taken from the implementation of git-flow in the GitVersion utility, which is documented here:

https://gitversion.net/docs/learn/branching-strategies/gitflow/examples

Answer 2

In my understanding all versions should be merged to and tagged on the master branch. As all Release branches should follow this flow. Semantic versioning should prevent people from updating to the released alpha/beta/RC versions.

This keeps your flow clean and straight forward. I.E. No branches are left open to clean up at a later date. And you always finish release branches in the same way after you've upped version number and tested your code.

Optional

You could remove all preliminary tags for a specific version after the real release. Yet again this is to keep your flow clean. As people are probably not going to checkout 'unstable' versions of a full and stable release.

1.2.0-alpha
1.1.0
1.1.0-rc2
1.1.0-rc1
1.0.0
1.0.0-beta1
1.0.0-alpha1

Would become

1.2.0-alpha
1.1.0
1.0.0