Great question — sounds like you’re ready to clean up and organize your Git branches in a way that avoids collisions (like the README overwrite) and gives each area a clear purpose. Here's a solid structure you can use:
🔧 Recommended Branch Setup
- 🟢 main
✅ Production-ready, stable code.
🔐 Protected (no direct pushes).
📁 Clean structure: only essential files (like README.md, package.json, src/).
🟡 acceptance
🚧 Pre-release/staging branch.
🧪 Used for QA/testing before merging to main.
🔄 Merges come from frontend-develop, backend-develop, or hotfix branches.
Never for documentation changes.
🎨 frontend-develop
🧠 Active development for frontend.
🔄 Merged into acceptance when features are ready.
👨💻 Collaborate here on components, styling, etc.
🧠 backend-develop
🧠 Active backend development.
🔄 Merged into acceptance when ready.
💾 APIs, databases, business logic.
📚 documentation
📝 Central place for all documentation.
🔄 Docs from backend-readme, frontend-readme, etc., merged here.
📁 Folder structure to separate doc types:
bash
/docs
/backend
README.md
/frontend
README.md
/general
contributing.md
architecture.md
✅ Clean Up Plan
Here’s how you could fix things and realign:
- Fix the README Overwrite If main’s README.md got overwritten:
bash
# Checkout main
git checkout main
# View commit history for README.md
git log README.md
# Restore a previous version
git checkout -- README.md
git commit -m "Restore main README"
git push
- Move Documentation to the Right Place Take the changes you made in backend-readme and move them to:
bash
documentation/docs/backend/README.md
You can delete the backend-readme branch after the move (or archive it).
- Restrict What Goes Where
Branch Purpose What should go in it
main Production Final code, root README.md
acceptance Pre-release/testing Tested features only
frontend-develop Frontend features Frontend code only
backend-develop Backend features Backend code only
documentation Docs only All documentation, organized in /docs
📦 Bonus: .gitignore and README Tip
In your main README.md, just keep high-level info: project name, setup, contributors, etc.
For in-depth backend/frontend docs, link to:
scss
See full backend documentation [here](./docs/backend/README.md)
Want help writing a shell script to automate cleaning this up, or want a visual git flow chart?