Hotfix Workflow

This section will describe how to create a hotfix to a previous release.

Determine Version Number

The first thing you must do before creating a hotfix to a previous release is determine the new (semantic) version number.

In this example, we’ll be using v3.2.1. That’s

  • a MAJOR version 3,

  • a MINOR version 2, and

  • a PATCH version 1

For this workflow, we assume that the previous release that we need to patch was v3.2.0, and we’ll be creating a hotfix v3.2.1. The PATCH version must always be one higher than the previous release that we’re patching.

    v 3 . 2 . 1 ⭠ PATCH
MAJOR ⮥   ⮤ MINOR

Create Hotfix Branch

In our project, we only put production-ready stable code in the master branch. No commits should occur in master.

The dev branch and feature-specific branches are branched-off from the dev branch or master directly.

Since your hotfix applies to an old release and there may have since been changes to dev or master that we don’t want to backport just for the hotfix, we should create a hotfix-specific branch from the previous release branch.

user@host:~/buskill-app$ git checkout -b v3.2.1 refs/heads/v3.2.0
Switched to a new branch 'v3.2.1'
userhost:~/buskill-app$

user@host:~/buskill-app$ git push origin v3.2.1
Total 0 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote:
remote: Create a pull request for 'v3.2.1' on GitHub by visiting:
remote:      https://github.com/BusKill/buskill-app/pull/new/v3.2.0
remote:
To github.com:BusKill/buskill-app.git
* [new branch]      v3.2.1 -> v3.2.1
user@host:~/buskill-app$

Finalize Release

After applying your patch to the new v3.2.1 branch, make sure to also

  1. Update CHANGELOG

  2. Test

  3. Update documentation

Then commit the changes and push to github. Do not merge the hotfix branch with any other branch.

user@host:~/buskill-app/$ vim CHANGELOG
user@host:~/buskill-app/$ git commit -am 'updated changelog for new release'
user@host:~/buskill-app/$ git push
...

Tag

Create a tag for the new hotfix release, and push that to github.com

user@host:~/buskill-app$ git branch -l
  dev
  master
  v3.2.0
* v3.2.1
user@host:~/buskill-app$

user@host:~/buskill-app$ git tag v3.2.1

user@host:~/buskill-app$ git push origin refs/tags/v3.2.1
Total 0 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To github.com:BusKill/buskill-app.git
 * [new tag]         v3.2.1 -> v3.2.1
user@host:~/buskill-app$

Build, Sign, and Upload

To build, sign, and upload the hotfix release, follow the same steps in the Release Workflow documentation.