GitFlow is now supported on Platform.sh!

We have just deployed an important update on our infrastructure, with many bug fixes and new features.

Notably, some long-wanted features, like support for GitFlow’s branch names.

This update is already available for new projects, and existing projects will get it in the coming weeks.

Some notable bug fixes and new features:

• More lax restrictions for service names (the key in the  .platform/services.yaml ), dashes and underscores are allowed.
• Show a warning when the cron is  * * * * *  explaining that the minimum is still 5 minutes.
• Allow a branch named  HEAD  to exist.
• Display user information when connecting via SSH to your environment.
• Restrict deletion of branch having an active child.

The most notable new feature is the removal of restrictions for naming Git branches.

Given that we give a URL for every Git branch, we needed to make sure that the branch name could be translated into a host name.

With this constraint, one of the restrictions was that you couldn’t put slashes ( / ) in branch names. GitFlow uses slashes in its default settings, so the default setup was broken. Although in practice, you could switch to  -- , it was still more painful than needed.

It is now possible!

We have introduced a change in generating the URL format: a random string is added to the URL. This allows us to strip out the invalid characters for URLs and still keep any other configuration unaffected.

For example on a project with an id hvnz6xzcxx7qm with a branch name  beta/sprint1 , the URL would be something like  https://hvnz6xzcxx7qm-beta-sprint1-dkrofi.eu.platform.sh  with the random string  dkrofi  added to the url.

Currently, this update only applies to new projects and new environments. We will deploy this change for all existing projects very soon.

This restriction lift means that other things like capitalization are also properly handled – most of what Git supports, we support it too!

Note that you need to upgrade your Platform.sh CLI to the latest version (3.4.0) by running  platform up  in your terminal.

Enjoy the new update and hack away!