Release: Merging Development branch back into Main branch

local master is up-to-date

First create an integration branch out of your development branch

git checkout -b development-int

This guarantees that you won't spoil your development branch
This is especially valid for dev branches that are also remote, we should never rewrite the history of a shared branch

Then rebase that new branch onto master

git rebase -i master development-int

Ideally you do an interactive rebase with the -i flag, so that you can squash, reorder, or drop commits: https://help.github.com/articles/about-git-rebase/
Having 3 commits for subsequently renaming a class is an ideal candidate for squashing
Don't hesitate to re-do it several times over. It's easier to, for example, first reorder some commits, make sure they can be re-applied in that order, then do a second rebase to squash'em.
For fixing problems, these pages might help: https://help.github.com/articles/resolving-a-merge-conflict-from-the-command-line/ and https://help.github.com/articles/resolving-merge-conflicts-after-a-git-rebase/

Publish that integration branch, so this can be used for reviews

git push -u origin development-int

Now all your commits are stacked on top of the latest master, therefore merging to master should be a fast-forward. We want to enforce this.

git checkout master
git merge development-int --ff-only

Finally if you have to pull again from master before pushing, don't forget to do a pull rebase.

git pull --rebase

Delete your integration branch

git branch -d development-int

If you pushed it, then delete the remote branch too:

git push origin --delete development-int

Don't forget to push the rebase to github:

git push

Your branch commits are flattened into master's history You can keep working on your dev branch

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