releasebranches

Release branches are a software development practice used to prepare a new version for release while ongoing development continues on separate branches. A release branch is typically created from the main development branch (such as develop in Git Flow) when the team starts stabilizing the next release. It is intended to hold the final stage of the release process, including bug fixes, documentation updates, and release notes, without introducing new features that are still being developed.

On the release branch, developers focus on stabilizing the code, running quality assurance, fixing critical defects, and performing last-minute refinements. The branch is often short-lived and is merged back into the primary branch (for example, main or master) after testing is complete. The changes from the release branch are then also merged back into the ongoing development branch to ensure fixes are included in future releases. In Git Flow, this is done by creating a release/x.y branch from develop, finishing the release by merging into main and back into develop, and tagging the release.

Naming conventions vary, but common patterns include release/1.2 or release-1.2.x. Advantages of this approach include isolating release work, enabling parallel feature development, and stabilizing the release candidate. Disadvantages include extra merge work and potential drift between branches if not synchronized. Some teams instead use trunk-based development or feature flags to avoid long-lived release branches, depending on their governance and tooling.