What is the best Git strategy when merging back a release branch into master?

Question

Following the Git Flow model, consider a release branch branched off from develop . After any required bug fixes on the release branch, what is best to do and why?

1. merge back release into develop and then merge back develop into master
2. merge back release into develop and also merge release into master

Thank you

Answer 1

The actual difference will be that what has been added to develop since release was branched off of it won't make it into master in case #2, but will in case #1. Looking at the GitFlow diagrams, it seems that #2 is what's always done. You don't want to merge unreleased code into master , so you never merge develop directly into master . And this makes sense, right?

Note that this holds true for when you choose to merge the release branch as well. You only merge the release branch into master when you do a release. So again, you don't want anything in master that hasn't been released.