1. Centralized Main Branch: By creating a single primary development branch, known as the main branch, you can effectively limit the inconsistencies and conflicts that can arise when multiple branches are active. The main branch also becomes the single source of truth in future iterations.
2. Branching Model: To ensure a consistent workflow, you should create a single branching model to manage all branches, such as GitFlow. This creates a structure that governs the creation, removal, and merging of branches, as well as when to tag releases.
3. Naming Conventions: Applying smart, uniform naming conventions to branches helps ensure that they are easy to differentiate and understand, so teams can work together more efficiently.
4. Role-Based Access: Generally, access to store code instances should be based on roles. By establishing a user policy and permission system tied to roles, you can ensure that only the right personnel have access to each branch.
The main branch is where the code stays until it is ready to be released. By organizing specific feature, hotfix, and release branches off of the main branch, development teams can work collaboratively but independently. The creation of multiple feature branches allows developers to work on individual pieces of the project without potentially overstepping on other teams’ performance. All feature branches will eventually be merged back into the main branch. Once a feature or hotfix is done and tested, its respective branch is merged into the main branch, and then the code is made available in the project release.
In the event of an emergency, a hotfix branch can be used to immediately address the issue and merge the changes into the main branch. This should also be used if a release needs to be rolled back. Because all data changes should be carefully tracked, labels should be added to main branch commits that indicate when a release took place. Know more about the Top 7 Salesforce Release Management Best Practices to maximize your Salesforce system.
In conclusion, an optimized CI/CD branching strategy is essential for enterprise Salesforce solutions. By adhering to best practices, such as creating a centralized main branch, establishing a branching model, adopting sensible naming conventions, and role-based access control, you can ensure that projects can be reliably released, backed up, and secured. Discover more about The Benefits of Implementing a CI/CD Branching Strategy for Salesforce Platforms.