finishing-a-development-branch

Finishing a development branch safely requires running test validation first, then selecting a merge, pull request, keep, or discard path based on your git environment state. This ensures clean worktree cleanup and prevents merging broken code.

Git worktree cleanup works by detecting whether you are in a normal repo, named worktree, or detached HEAD state. It then executes provenance-safe worktree removal only for owned workspaces, requiring confirmation before discarding any changes.

The best way to manage a pull request workflow after implementation is to enforce test validation before presenting integration options. This environment-aware process detects your Git state and structures the merge, PR, keep, or discard menu accordingly.

Yes, this branch management approach works with detached HEAD states. It detects GIT_DIR versus GIT_COMMON environments and detached HEAD versus named worktree conditions to present the correct set of merge, keep, or discard options.

You need to run tests before merging a development branch to prevent integrating broken code into the main release workflow. This test-first completion step forces a validation check using the appropriate test command before presenting integration options.