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Code Flow and Branches

Introduction

The zephyr Git repository has three types of branches:

main

Which contains the latest state of development

topic-*

Topic branches that are used for shared development of a new feature

vx.y-branch

Branches which track maintenance releases based on a major release

Development in topic branches before features go to mainline allows teams to work independently on a subsystem or a feature, improves efficiency and turnaround time, and encourages collaboration and streamlines communication between developers.

Changes submitted to a development topic branch can evolve and improve incrementally in a branch, before they are submitted to the mainline tree for final integration.

By dedicating an isolated branch to complex features, it’s possible to initiate in-depth discussions around new additions before integrating them into the official project.

Roles and Responsibilities

Development topic branch owners have the following responsibilities:

  • Use the infrastructure and tools provided by the project (GitHub, Git)

  • Review changes coming from team members and request review from branch owners when submitting changes.

  • Keep the branch in sync with upstream and update on a regular basis.

  • Push changes frequently to upstream using the following methods:

    • GitHub pull requests: for example, when reviews have not been done in the local branch (one-man branch).

    • Merge requests: When a set of changes has been done in a local branch and has been reviewed and tested in a topic branch.