GitHub: What is a "wip" branch?

Question

When I was browsing GitHub repositories I quite often saw "wip" branches (e.g. 3.1.0-wip). What does "wip" mean?

I couldn't find the answer anywhere - neither on Google nor on GitHub:help.

"WIP" is also added automatically to the front of the message for the commit that is created when you do a "git stash". Again it means "work in progress". — John Pankowicz, Sep 14 '19 at 13:39

score 158 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 02 '13 at 11:35

158

Conventionally, "wip" stands for "work in progress".

answered Apr 02 '13 at 11:35

CB Bailey

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Can you elaborate how this state occurs? – shinobi May 10 '16 at 08:56
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It's not a state that occurs, the way I understand it. Developers mark a commit or branch as WIP to signify that the commits cannot stand on their own, that you should not check out a particular commit or revert to it and expect working code. Basically, to avoid stashing important changes that may not yet be finished, commit them to a WIP branch to store them away safely. – Harald Nordgren Jun 14 '16 at 19:17

koppor · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-31T20:43:20.443

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On GitHub, pull requests are prefixed by [WIP] to indicate that the pull requestor

has not yet finished his work on the code (thus, work in progress), but
looks for have some initial feedback (early-pull strategy), and
wants to use the continuous integration infrastructure of the project. For instance, GitHub Actions, TravisCI, CodeCov, and codacy.

More motivation for WIP pull requests is written by @ben straub at https://ben.straub.cc/2015/04/02/wip-pull-request/.

New Since Februrary 2019, GitHub offers draft pull requests, which make WIP more explicit: https://github.blog/2019-02-14-introducing-draft-pull-requests/

edited Mar 31 '20 at 20:43

answered Sep 28 '16 at 08:23

koppor

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This is a more useful answer – Jimi Jun 01 '18 at 09:27
I think this happens after doing a stash then a pull, right ? – velocity Oct 11 '19 at 10:08
@velocity stashes and pull requests are independent concepts. "WIP" are "just" letters someone uses at the beginning of a text (the title of the pull request) – koppor Oct 12 '19 at 11:12
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side note: we use a WIP label rather than altering the text of the name or description – jaydel Sep 15 '21 at 11:50

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 27 '19 at 13:31

Literally it means Work In Progress (WIP) as previous answers correctly point out. However, it does not occur only on GitHub, but can happen also on any other competitive platform, e.g. Bitbucket, GitLab etc.

It can be the case also with your Git (the VCS, not GitHub, GitLab, etc. - it's not the same) on local machine. In situations when you would like to save your progress on current branch and move to another it can be helpful in order not to lose your uncommited changes. In such a way you'd like to use use git stash. Then you will see the WIP... as one of the branches in Git Bash/GUI.

If you would submit this branch then of course you can see it in the project on Bitbucket/GitHub/GitLab too. Therefore, it is not only for push Pull Requests (PRs), but might be accidentally/on purpose pushed too.

GitHub: What is a "wip" branch?

3 Answers3

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