Keep Branches Short-Lived and Updated

Keep Branches Short-Lived and Updated | BeforeMerge Rules | BeforeMerge

Why this matters

The longer a branch lives, the further it drifts from the base branch, and the more conflicts and integration risk pile up. Short-lived branches that you update frequently keep merges small, reviews fast, and conflicts trivial.

Bad

# branch open for 3 weeks, never updated from main
git merge feature/huge-rewrite   # 80 conflicts

Good

git fetch origin
git rebase origin/main           # stay current; resolve small conflicts early

Why This Matters

Related Rules

Catch this automatically on every PR

Why this matters