Freezing a Git branch

Question

Let\'s say I have a develop branch. I create a feature branch from this to develop a feature. Once the feature is developed, it is merged back into develop. Pretty much like

Answer 1

Christopher is right, tagging will help you do this. I recommend deleting the branch name too to make it a little harder for someone to checkout the branch and make edits.

First, merge the branch into develop

git checkout develop
git merge --no-ff feature_1 

Then checkout the branch

git checkout feature_1

Then create a tag, with a comment.

git tag -a -m "Freezing a feature branch that fixes.." feature_1_frozen

Then delete the branch

git checkout develop
git branch -d feature_1

After doing this, you won't be able to checkout the branch by name. Instead you'll be able to checkout the tag by name, this will put you into a detached head state which will deter changes to the code.

Now to wrap things up and sync with origin...

Push the update and new tag

git push --tags origin develop

Delete the remote feature branch

git push origin :feature_1