Release Hardening and Bug Fixes

Current approved flow

During release hardening, develop is frozen. This is an intentional interim control that allows fixes to use the existing Dev environment before promotion.

flowchart LR
  Bug[Bug found in Test] --> Fix[Create fix branch from develop]
  Fix --> PRD[PR to develop]
  PRD --> Dev[Deploy and validate in Dev]
  Dev --> PRR[PR containing the fix to release branch]
  PRR --> Test[Deploy and regress in Test]
  Test --> Ready[Release readiness]

Rules

• No unrelated features enter develop during the freeze.
• A fix PR includes a regression test where technically feasible.
• The release PR contains only the intended fix and required supporting changes.
• QA validates the fix in Dev and repeats relevant regression in Test.
• If the same defect exists on main, the fix still progresses through the controlled path unless an emergency hotfix is declared.

Why this is temporary

Freezing develop reduces throughput and creates coordination overhead. It is accepted because Nexa currently lacks a safe environment in which a branch from release can be deployed and tested independently.

Exit criteria for the future model

Nexa can fix release first and forward-merge to develop when it has reliable preview environments, automated environment provisioning, test data isolation, service-composition controls, and automated forward-merge/cherry-pick support with conflict handling.