Explanation
Gated commits are a key technical practice that enables trunk-based development. Gated commits are a mechanism that ensures that only code that passes certain quality checks and tests can be committed to the main trunk of the shared codebase. Gated commits prevent broken changes from affecting other developers or the Continuous Delivery Pipeline. Gated commits typically involve the following steps:
A developer writes code and runs local tests on their own machine or branch.
The developer pushes the code to a remote repository, where a pre-commit hook triggers a build and test process on a separate server.
The build and test process verifies that the code meets the quality standards and does not introduce any errors or conflicts with the existing code on the trunk.
If the build and test process succeeds, the code is automatically merged into the trunk and becomes available for other developers and downstream activities.
If the build and test process fails, the code is rejected and the developer is notified of the issues that need to be fixed before retrying the commit.
Gated commits support trunk-based development by ensuring that the trunk is always in a releasable state, which means that at least once a day, developers must integrate their changes to the trunk. This is accomplished through short-lived feature branches related to project tasks. Gated commits reduce the complexity and conflicts of merging long-lived branches, improve the quality and consistency of the code by enforcing frequent testing and validation, accelerate the delivery and deployment of new functionality by minimizing the transaction cost and risk, and foster a culture of collaboration and transparency among developers