Git Flow finishing a release

Once the release development / fix is completed, we have to finish the release branch, while finishing a release the updates (commits) from this branch will be merged with develop and master branches and the release branch will be deleted.

In the post Git flow starting a new Release, we saw on how to start a new release using git flow, and in the post Git flow adding commits to a new Release, we saw on how to add / update changes to the new release. In this post we shall see on how to finish the changes made to the new release.

1.  Open Source Tree.

2. Click on the Git Flow icon in the tool bar.

3.   A pop-up window appears, with the available options.

4. In our case we have a release branch “Release1”, we will finish changes done in this branch by clicking on the Finish Release button.

5.  Select the release to be finished, in our case the release is Release1

6.  Make sure that the delete branch checkbox is checked, this will delete the release branch post-merger and will make a clean branching structure. Click Ok.

7. Notice that the new release branch is removed, the changes done in this branch are now merged to the develop and master branches and the release branch is deleted.

8.   Push the changes, so that the branch merger and deletion updates are pushed to the remote repository.

9. If the release branch is not deleted from the remote repository, you can manually delete this branch from the remote repository since the changes are already merged to the develop and master branches.

10.  That’s it the new release is now merged with the main develop and master branches and is now ready for production deployment.