Why is the develop branch needed?

The develop branch exists to be the central branch of active development, where all new changes are gathered before reaching production.

Put simply: develop is the team's "sandbox," where code is already gathered together but is not yet a release.

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#The main role of the develop branch

develop is used in Gitflow and performs several important functions.

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#Why develop is needed

#1. A common integration point for features

• all feature/* branches are merged into develop
• that is where the code first meets other code
• it shows how the features work together

develop shows the current state of the upcoming version.

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#2. Isolating production

• main stays stable
• no "raw" features reach production directly
• errors are caught before the release

Fewer risks for users.

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#3. A basis for releases

• once functionality is ready, a release/* branch is created from develop
• no new features are added in release anymore
• only fixes and version preparation

A clear, controlled release process.

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#4. Simplifying parallel work

• developers work independently in feature/*
• develop is updated regularly
• conflicts are found earlier

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#What is NOT done in develop

• it is not deployed to production
• urgent production hotfixes are not made there
• direct commits are not made there (usually only through a PR)

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#Visually (logic, not a diagram)

• main - what is already in production
• develop - what will be in the next release
• feature/* - what is currently in progress

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#When develop is not needed

develop is often not used if:

• Feature Branch Workflow is used
• trunk-based development is used
• releases are frequent and automated

In these cases:

• feature branches are merged directly into main

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#Short answer for an interview

The develop branch is needed as the central development branch in Gitflow: all new features are gathered there before a release, release branches are formed from it, and the production branch main stays stable.