Top all-time · #477
Vincent Driessen
Personal blog · nvie.comprogrammingwriting
Vincent Driessen's personal blog at nvie.com covers programming and writing. Since 2010, 120 different Hacker News readers have linked it 133 times, most often “A successful Git branching model (2010)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-18, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 15 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this post as the reference for git-flow, a branching model they adopt or recommend, and cite it when discussing git workflows.
- Recommended for · 15 comments
- Described as compelling, excellent, a good place to start, and simpler and more robust (one comment each).
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Thoughts and writings by Vincent Driessen.
Most-linked posts?
- A successful Git branching model (2010)67 people · 68 mentions · first linked 2010-09-14
- A note of reflection after 10 years of “A successful Git branching model”17 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2019-01-17
- Better Package Management for python5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-05-08
- A Successful Git Branching Model 5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-03-17
- Pin Your Packages3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-09-26
- How I boosted my Vim3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-09-13
- Introducing RQ: Simple job queues for Python3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-03-28
- 15 years later, Microsoft morged my diagram2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-18
- A successful Git branching model2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-01-19
- Beautiful Map2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-06-15
What Hacker News says?
I'm specifically thinking of git-flow ( https://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/); every build system I've interacted with has been some flavor of this. The crux here is that there is a single branch that deploys occur from. Not uncommonly, this is the default branch.
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/);
on “GitHub, fuck your name change”Submitted A successful Git branching model as a story · 268 points
HN discussionI was in the audience when you gave the 5-minute docker lightning talk at PyCon US Santa Clara in 2013. I remember chatting with a friend/colleague about it ( https://nvie.com/about/ ) and we both agreed it was the most interesting lightning talk that day. What’s funny, though, is that since it was “just” a lightning talk, it didn’t even make it into the roundup of notes I sent to my team after PyCon. But a mere yea…
Comment linking /about/
on “Docker is weird”Submitted A note of reflection after 10 years of “A successful Git branching model” as a story · 199 points
HN discussionI'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts on deploying feature branches to production before merging them. I've generally followed more of a git-flow approach [1]. This seems to have the advantage that multiple feature branches can be grouped and deployed together - thus, avoiding the problem in the article of the deploy queue becoming a bottle neck. [1] http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/#c…
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
on “How to Deploy Software”Submitted How I boosted my Vim as a story · 164 points
HN discussionThis is a good start, but it has issues. You probably don't want all of your locally installed packages in a requirements.txt file. Instead, they should be curated. I've been using pip-compile [0] for a while now (see the author's blog post [1] for a detailed explanation) and have become a big fan of it. With this model, you should enumerate only what your application uses directly and let pip-compile convert this l…
Comment linking /posts/better-package-management/
on “Disabling npm's progress bar yields a 2x npm install speed improvement”Submitted Tutorial: How to use Git in a team development environment as a story · 137 points
HN discussionWell done. This will work quite well with Vincent Driessen's "A Successful Git Branching Model." http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ And with nearly all sensible git branching models for that matter.
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
on “Releases – a workflow for shipping software to end users”Submitted Introducing Times (for Python) as a story · 128 points
HN discussionInteresting. I have only ever heard "gitflow" used to refer to the specific model described in https://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ . The author also wrote a tool, "git-flow", to assist with this model https://github.com/nvie/gitflow . I have heard the terms "git branching model" or "git workflow" used for the concept that you call "gitflow".
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
on “Please stop recommending Gitflow”Submitted A successful Git branching model (2010) as a story · 127 points
HN discussionOP might have just professed "I am not technically advanced, Git has powerful features I'd never use, it should cater to me." In general, there are too many of these articles on HN about "I don't know how to use it, so it's terrible." What OP fails to grasp is the purposeful difference between Git and other revision/version control systems. Git attempts to cover anything you would ever want to do. Git is the Photosh…
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
on “What I Hate About Git”Submitted 15 years later, Microsoft morged my diagram as a story · 94 points
HN discussionOne big thing that helped me get started was following this workflow: http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ If you have co-workers whose workflow you can copy then I don't think it is needed, but if you want to start a project from scratch with Git then having a plan like this can be really helpful.
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
on “Pro Git, 2nd Edition”Submitted A successful Git branching model as a story · 65 points
HN discussionhttps://github.com/nvie/gitflow works really well. The original post http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ was really compelling, and using it has really helped, at least what I do.
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
on “Understanding the Git Workflow”Submitted A successful Git branching model (2010) as a story · 61 points
HN discussionAfter learning Git, it is important to follow a branching model, I really appreciate the one proposed here http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model
on “A Hacker’s Guide to Git”Submitted Survey: Python vs Ruby Test Ecosystems as a story · 33 points
HN discussionMy entire git workflow is based on these tutorials (don't seem to need much else): https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Branching-Basic-Branching... and http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ Anyone knows what would be most usefull outside the scope of the tutorials above?
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
on “Understanding Git for real by exploring the .git directory”Submitted Better Package Management for python as a story · 17 points
HN discussionThe best resources I've found for understanding git workflows are by Vincent Driessen[1] and Atlassian[2]. The Atlassian page is much more comprehensive, and in fact derives the 'GitFlow' workflow from Driessen. However, I prefer his original top-to-bottom representation (a left-to-right time axis seems less intuitive to me - they remind me of a football playbook rather than a waterfall). [1] http://nvie.com/posts/a…
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
on “Visualizing Git Concepts with D3.js”Submitted A successful Git branching model as a story · 8 points
HN discussion1. Do it propery :) Here's a good guide: https://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ 2. Gitlab has solutions, Atlassian Bamboo, Buddy, FTPloy, Jenkins, etc. 3. Monolog https://github.com/Seldaek/monolog
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
on “My PHP Development Setup”Submitted Open Sourcing: the Ultimate Isolation as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI always recommend this: http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ Not exactly a 'how it works' article, more how it can work really well
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
on “Gitlet: Git implemented in JavaScript”Submitted A successful Git branching model as a story · 6 points
HN discussion>Git is very popular in the Rails community, but there are probably no two companies using git the same way. For anyone not already aware of it, I recommend checking out Git Flow. It's a set of git extensions that standardize the git workflow: https://github.com/nvie/gitflow Some articles: http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1617425
Comment linking /posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
on “Staging Servers, Source Control & Deploy Workflows, And Other Stuff”Submitted A Successful Git Branching Model as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
