hotfix-strategy.md

Hotfix Strategy

In the event that a hotfix needs to be pushed to production ahead of the work currently in develop, these are the steps to follow:

1. Notify the rest of the team that a hotfix is needed
2. Create a hotfix branch directly off of main
3. Apply the fix and create a PR with main as the target branch
4. Merge the fix to the main branch
5. Deploy the latest main to the test environment
6. Test the fix in the test environment. Make sure to create any data needed to ensure the issue will be fixed in prod
7. Deploy the hotfix to prod
8. Notify the client that the fix has been applied and ask for confirmation that the issue is resolved in prod
9. Disable the Require pull request before merging protection on the develop branch in github
10. Take a screenshot of all the status checks that run on the develop branch then disable the Require status checks protection on the develop branch in github. Since we will not be merging a PR, there will be no status checks.
11. Enable Allow Force Pushes in the branch protections for the develop branch in github as the rebase is going to require a force push to the origin.
12. Ensure your local develop is up to date and then rebase develop on main without a PR (git rebase main when on the develop branch) & push
13. Re-enable the Require pull request before merging & Require status checks protections on the develop branch in github. You will have to manually add all the status checks back. Refer to your screenshot to ensure all the required checks are set.
14. Disable Allow Force Pushes in the branch protections.
15. Notify the rest of the dev team that the hotfix is finished & remind them that their in-progress PRs will need rebasing on develop
16. Write a postmortem on the issue if deemed necessary (ie: the problem caused downtime, data loss / leak or other significant issues worth documenting)