[bhuga]

The deployment system automatically merges master into the branch being tested on deployment, and will not deploy any branch that does not contain master. In fact, there is a check that nags the main app team if master is not deployed to production for some reason (usually someone merging docs changes while someone is testing a "real" branch). It's considered an abnormal state, and I will often block all deployments until we figure out why master hasn't gone out.

Even forced deployments (which ignore CI and a few other checks for emergencies or maintenance mode) won't deploy a branch that's 24 hours behind master.