I implemented a variety of GitFlow, but with an emphasis on automation. Normally you branch off of develop; hotfixes will be a branch off of master.
Feature branches are combined with develop before being built and tested. If it passes, it becomes mergeable in GitLab.
all builds of develop that pass are taggable; you go into the CI interface and specify a tag. Once deployed, master is updated by the CI to point to that tag.
The most valuable part of this is the CI pipeline and having a solid body of tests to ensure that changes which don't necessarily conflict in Git will most likely be caught during test, prior to it being allowed for merge.
Feature branches are combined with develop before being built and tested. If it passes, it becomes mergeable in GitLab.
all builds of develop that pass are taggable; you go into the CI interface and specify a tag. Once deployed, master is updated by the CI to point to that tag.
The most valuable part of this is the CI pipeline and having a solid body of tests to ensure that changes which don't necessarily conflict in Git will most likely be caught during test, prior to it being allowed for merge.