Git Flow finishing a hotfix

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

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

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 “Hotfix1”, we will finish changes done in this branch by clicking on the Finish Hotfix button.

5.    Select the hotfix to be finished, in our case the hotfix is Hotfix1

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

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

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

              9.            If the hotfix 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 hotfix is now merged with the main develop and master                             branches and is now ready for production deployment.