When you work in a continuous integration and development environment, you can configure a repository on a source development system to store and test software. You publish branches to repositories to store and test them. You can also configure a pipeline with REST services on your automation server to perform branch operations, such as detecting conflicts, merging branches, and creating branch reviews, immediately after you push a branch to the repository.

To use branches with repositories, you must perform the following tasks:

1. In Dev Studio, create a repository. For more information, see Creating a repository.

2. On the source development system, create a development application that is built on all the applications that will go into production. You must also create a ruleset in the development application that contains all the rules that you are using for continuous integration.

   For example: For example, if you have a production application MyCoAppwith with the rulesets MyCo:01-01 and MyCoInt:01-01, you can create a MyCoDevAppdevelopment application that is built on MyCoAppand has only one ruleset, MyCoCIDev:01-01. This ruleset contains the data transforms that are needed to set default information, such as the application into which branches will be merged.

   You can use the branches REST and merge REST services in your pipeline to perform branch operations. The branches REST service provides subresources that you can use to detect conflicts, merge branches, and create branch reviews.

3. Configure a continuous integration and development pipeline so that your automation server, such as Jenkins, starts a job immediately after you push a branch to the source development system.

   Use the branches REST and merge REST services in the pipeline to perform branch operations, such as detecting conflicts and merging branches. For more information, see Remotely starting automation jobs to perform branch operations and run unit tests.