[russell_h]

How do you know when to merge 'next' to master? It seems to me like you have the exact same problem as before, only now you're being interrupted because someone else broke next instead of master.

I could see it making more sense if you're on a well understood periodic release cycle, where breaking next isn't critical, and everyone knows to have it stabilized in time for the next release.

[jedbrown]

You never merge 'next' to 'master'. You merge topic branches when the topic is considered to be complete and stable (it "graduates"). The rerere [1,2,3] feature (a fantastic set-and-forget feature) ensures that you won't have to resolve the same conflict multiple times.

The amount of time required for a topic to stabilize in 'next' depends on the topic and what it affects, but you can easily summarize "branches in next, but not in master" to look for candidates.

Feature releases are tagged on 'master' and 'next' is usually rewound at a release (create a new 'next' branch starting at the release, merge all the branches that failed to graduate in this release cycle, and discard the old 'next'). This is easy to automate.

[1] http://git-scm.com/2010/03/08/rerere.html

[2] http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-rerere.h...

[3] http://gitster.livejournal.com/41795.html