Reviving a Ruby Project with Git: Organizing Branches for Stability

Ruby on Rails Developer March 6, 2025 Introduction Recently, I spent time bringing a Ruby project back on track. The project had a poor test suite and lacked code organization, leading to frequent deployment errors. One of the major issues was the disorganized branching strategy, which resulted in what I call "spaghetti branches." To ensure stability and minimize deployment errors, I decided to clean up and establish a consistent branch structure. Need Expert Ruby on Rails Developers to Elevate Your Project? Fill out our form! >> Organizing the Branches The project initially had both a develop and a main branch, but their usage was inconsistent. My goal was to: Establish a clear separation between the stable and development branches. Reduce errors caused by untested or incomplete pull requests. Implement a structured workflow to make deployments more predictable. Finding a Stable Starting Point The first step was identifying a past stable version of the system. To do this, I searched the Git history for a commit when everything was working properly: git log From the log, I located a commit SHA associated with a stable version of the project: b0606efe6087be75e2ad7f19825dc5aba71ff0c2 Using this commit, I created a new stable branch: git branch stable-point git reset --hard b0606efe6087be75e2ad7f19825dc5aba71ff0c2 Rebuilding the Main Branch To rebuild the main branch, I followed these steps: First, switch to the latest active branch: git switch latest-branch Create a new main branch: git branch main git switch main Perform an interactive rebase onto the stable point: git rebase -i stable-point During this process, I carefully reviewed the commit history, removing untested or incomplete pull requests that required additional QA before merging into production.

Mar 7, 2025 - 18:43

Reviving a Ruby Project with Git: Organizing Branches for Stability

Ruby on Rails Developer

March 6, 2025

Introduction

Recently, I spent time bringing a Ruby project back on track. The project had a poor test suite and lacked code organization, leading to frequent deployment errors. One of the major issues was the disorganized branching strategy, which resulted in what I call "spaghetti branches." To ensure stability and minimize deployment errors, I decided to clean up and establish a consistent branch structure.

Need Expert Ruby on Rails Developers to Elevate Your Project?
Fill out our form! >>

Organizing the Branches

The project initially had both a develop and a main branch, but their usage was inconsistent. My goal was to:

Establish a clear separation between the stable and development branches.
Reduce errors caused by untested or incomplete pull requests.
Implement a structured workflow to make deployments more predictable.

Finding a Stable Starting Point

The first step was identifying a past stable version of the system. To do this, I searched the Git history for a commit when everything was working properly:

git log

From the log, I located a commit SHA associated with a stable version of the project:

b0606efe6087be75e2ad7f19825dc5aba71ff0c2

Using this commit, I created a new stable branch:

git branch stable-point
git reset --hard b0606efe6087be75e2ad7f19825dc5aba71ff0c2
Rebuilding the Main Branch

To rebuild the main branch, I followed these steps:

First, switch to the latest active branch:

git switch latest-branch

Create a new main branch:

git branch main
git switch main

Perform an interactive rebase onto the stable point:

git rebase -i stable-point

During this process, I carefully reviewed the commit history, removing untested or incomplete pull requests that required additional QA before merging into production.