[layer8]

It can be beneficial if there is no mechanism that ensures that develop is always in a working state, but there is one that ensures that master is. The immediate benefit is that a new feature branch can always be started off master from a known-good state.

Of course, there are ways to enforce a known-good state on master without a dedicated develop branch, but it can be easier when having the two branches.

(I just dislike the name “develop”, because branch names should be nouns.)

[simianwords]

Prod deployments usually have a tag associated

[layer8]

Prod deployment isn’t the same as known-good. The latter can be “passes all automated quality controls”; that doesn’t automatically mean that it’ll be deployed. Release/deploy cadences can be much slower than merge-into-master, and usually depend on actual feature (set) completion.