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How do you implement effective DevOps version control practices?
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Version control seems basic but I see teams struggling with it all the time. What DevOps version control practices have you found most effective beyond just using Git?
I'm thinking about things like branching strategies (GitFlow vs trunk-based), commit message conventions, code review processes, and handling large binary files.
How do you balance flexibility for developers with the need for stability and traceability? And what tools or integrations help enforce these practices?
For DevOps version control practices, we switched to trunk-based development and it's been transformative. No more long-lived feature branches that diverge from main. Developers work in short-lived branches and merge frequently.
We use semantic commit messages (feat:, fix:, chore:, etc.) and require all commits to reference a ticket number. This makes it easy to understand why changes were made and track them back to requirements.
For code reviews, we have a two eyes" policy - every change needs at least two approvals before merging. We also use automated tools to check for security issues, code style violations, and test coverage.
One DevOps version control practice that's saved us countless headaches: squashing commits before merging. Each feature or fix becomes a single, clean commit in the main branch. Makes bisecting and understanding history much easier.
We also use Git hooks to enforce standards. Pre-commit hooks run tests and linting, pre-push hooks run more comprehensive checks, and pre-receive hooks on the server enforce branch protection rules.
For large files, we use Git LFS (Large File Storage). Binaries, datasets, and other large assets are stored separately but still versioned. Regular Git repositories stay fast and manageable.
We've found that DevOps version control practices need to include infrastructure code too. We store Terraform configurations, Ansible playbooks, and Kubernetes manifests in the same repositories as application code. This ensures everything needed to deploy and run the service is versioned together.
We also use Git tags extensively for releases. Every production deployment creates a tag with the version number. Makes it easy to see what's deployed where and roll back to specific versions if needed.
For teams new to Git, we created interactive tutorials using Katacoda. Much more effective than sending people to read documentation on their own.
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