Release control & issue tracking with Github

Question

Based on my SO post I've been using Github as our VCS and with the help of the windows Github tool it's been great to handle those basic operations. Yet for merge like operations, I've to get back to Gitbash (SO Post) but thats ok.

So, the source code level VCS is in place. Now, we want to take a step forward and use its simple issue-tracker to have "release control". For us, this means being able to track each stable build (it can be a new feature or bug fix, etc..) The idea is to create issues, tie them to a milestone and use Github commit comments to close the issue and mark it as a stable release/build. Where does tagging come in picture?

I've learned that we shud have a "development" branch for ongoing changes and periodically merged with the master (i.e. each stable build).

Is this the right way? We need to be able to go back to release / build 1.0 from 1.1 - sort of rollback just in case its required anytime in future (is this possible? how?) Is Github suffie or do we need to use some external tools as well?

Please share your experience and suggestions.

Answer 1

As I wait for other expert comments, I'd like to share a model that I've come across and seems great!

A successful Git branching model (SO Post)

To summarize, here is how I can address my basic needs (and scale it as and when required) -

• Initially maintain two branches "master" and "development"
• Master should always have a stable version and development has an ongoing source (might not be stable)
• In the future, if we need to fix a bug after release, we can create a hotfix branch and when stable merge it with master/development
• A good thing I found is that I can maintain stable releases in form of tags (i.e. new tag for each new version)
• Eventually, master branch will be merged with development as we proceed with each stable version

There's a lot more that can be handled with the above model but I see my initial concerns addressed. Any better suggestions?