Git workflow best practices for developers

I\'ll never forget the weekend I lost to untangling a Git history. A critical bug had been introduced, but our repository was such a mess of sprawling branches and vague \"WIP\" commits that finding the source felt like code archaeology. That was my turning point. I realized that a good Git workflow isn\'t just a \"nice-to-have\" for nerdy purists; it\'s a fundamental productivity tool that saves your future self from utter chaos. After years of trial, error, and leading development teams, I\'ve settled on a set of practices that prioritize clarity and communication above all else.

The foundation: main is the source of truth

The first mental shift I had to make was treating the `main` (or `master`) branch as sacred. It should always be stable, deployable, and reflect the current state of production. Nothing gets merged into `main` until it\'s been reviewed and tested. This sounds obvious, but I\'ve seen too many projects where `main` was constantly broken. Enforcing this rule was the first step toward sanity. It means I can always pull from `main` to start a new feature with confidence, knowing I\'m not building on a broken foundation.

My non-negotiable rule: atomic commits

If there\'s one habit that has saved me more time than any other, it\'s making small, atomic commits. I used to be guilty of coding for half a day and then lumping everything into one giant commit with the message \"updated user profile page.\" It was a nightmare. If one part of that commit introduced a bug, I\'d have to revert the entire thing, losing good code along with the bad. Now, I live by one rule: one logical change per commit. Fixed a typo? Commit. Added a button? Commit. Refactored a function? Commit. It makes code reviews faster, `git bisect` a powerful debugging tool, and my commit history a readable story of how the project evolved.

How I structure my commit messages

Vague commit messages are useless. After experimenting with a few styles, I landed on the Conventional Commits specification. It\'s simple but incredibly powerful. Every message follows a pattern: `type(scope): subject`. For example: `feat(api): add user authentication endpoint` or `fix(ui): correct button alignment on mobile`. This structure isn\'t just for neatness; it makes the history scannable and allows for the automatic generation of changelogs. It forces me to think about the *intent* of my change before I even write the message.

Choosing a branching strategy that actually works

I\'ve tried complex workflows like Git Flow, and honestly, for most web development projects I\'ve worked on, it\'s overkill. The overhead of managing `develop`, `release`, and `hotfix` branches often created more confusion than it solved. For the last few years, I\'ve almost exclusively used a simple Feature Branch Workflow (sometimes called GitHub Flow). It\'s beautifully straightforward:

1. To start a new task, create a descriptive branch from the latest `main`: `git checkout -b feature/new-user-dashboard`.
2. Do all your work on this branch, making small, atomic commits.
3. Regularly update your branch with the latest changes from `main` using `git pull --rebase origin main`. This is key for avoiding massive merge conflicts later.
4. When the feature is complete and tested, open a Pull Request (PR) to merge it back into `main`.
5. Once the PR is reviewed and approved, merge it and delete the feature branch.

This keeps the `main` branch clean and ensures that every change is reviewed before being integrated. It’s a simple, low-friction process that scales well without unnecessary complexity.

The small habit that creates a clean history

I mentioned it above, but it deserves its own section: using `git pull --rebase` instead of a standard `git pull` (which is a fetch then a merge). When you rebase, Git takes your local commits, temporarily sets them aside, pulls the new commits from the remote `main` branch, and then reapplies your commits one by one on top of the latest changes. The result? A perfectly linear, clean history that looks like you did all your work based on the absolute latest version of the code. It took me a little while to get comfortable with it, but once I did, I never looked back. My Git log is now a clean narrative, not a tangled web of merge bubbles.