Feature Branches

What's a Feature Branch?

Developers branch from the default branch (hereafter called “main”). The branch created is a feature branch. The best feature branches are created to make a discrete, well-defined change.

Optimal

An optimal feature branch:

• Adds one feature or
• Fixes one bug or
• Makes administrative corrections, such as correcting indentation, whitespace, general linting, or adding documentation
• Has a branch name that conveys information about the changes in that branch. A good branch name could include some or all of the following (ideally separated by hyphens or underscores for readability), depending on the team/project:
  • <author>
  • <branch-type> e.g. ‘bug’, ‘wip’, ‘feature’
  • <branch-name-or-unique-identifier> e.g. a JIRA ticket ID
• Includes a small number of commits with informative and useful commit messages. Note that you can combine a bunch of ‘working commits’ together into a single, focused commit by performing an interactive rebase before pushing your branch. Rewriting commit history after pushing a branch is not recommended.

A sub-optimal feature branch:

• Adds multiple features or
• Fixes lots of bugs or
• Mixes up adding features, fixing bugs, and making administrative corrections.
• Lacks a meaningful name that helps understand what changes it contains
• Includes many commits with messages that aren’t meaningful or helpful

That is, don't do this:

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