command-center/omp-docs/engineering/sdlc.md

type, title, description, tags, timestamp

type	title	description	tags	timestamp
reference	SDLC and Tooling Best Practices	Current best practices for the software development life cycle - git, CI/CD, testing, review, versioning, and dev environments.	sdlc git ci-cd testing tooling unverified	2026-08-11

verified: 2026-08-28

SDLC and Tooling Best Practices

This page distills current (2025/2026) best practices for running a software project. Use it when you bootstrap a new repository or when you review an existing one.

Git Branching

Trunk-based development dominates. Teams use short-lived feature branches and merge into a single shared main branch. Feature flags hide incomplete features. This replaces older models such as GitFlow for most projects.

Use GitHub Flow as the default for new projects. Create a branch for each change. Open a pull request for every change. Merge the change after review. Deploy from main at any time.

The rule main must stay deployable at all times.

Continuous Integration and Delivery

GitHub Actions is the most common CI/CD platform. Workflows live in .github/workflows/. A standard workflow follows this order: lint, test, build, deploy.

Use these patterns:

• Run one pipeline for pull request checks.
• Run a separate pipeline for main branch deployments.
• Use matrix builds to test multiple tool versions.
• Cache dependencies between runs.
• Split shared steps into reusable workflows.

Testing

Follow the testing pyramid. Write many unit tests. Write fewer integration tests. Write the fewest end-to-end tests.

Layer	Speed	Focus
Unit	Fast	Isolated functions and modules
Integration	Medium	Service-to-service interaction
End-to-end	Slow	Complete user journeys

Aim for roughly ten unit tests per integration test, and ten integration tests per end-to-end test.

Code Review

Reduce review friction with these tools:

• Pull request templates for consistency.
• CODEOWNERS to assign reviewers by path.
• Required review before merge.
• Pre-commit hooks for lint and format checks.

Semantic Versioning

Version numbers follow the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH format.

• MAJOR changes when an API breaks compatibility.
• MINOR changes when features stay compatible.
• PATCH changes fix bugs in a compatible way.

Pre-release versions use -alpha, -beta, or -rc suffixes.

Development Environments

Use mise to manage tool versions, environment variables, and named tasks in one mise.toml file. mise replaces the separate tools asdf and direnv, and it replaces a Makefile for tasks.

Use Dev Containers for reproducible environments. The Dev Container Specification uses .devcontainer/devcontainer.json. It works with VS Code, Codespaces, and the container CLI.

Per-Ecosystem Variations

Ecosystem	Manifest	Package manager	Test command
Node/JS	package.json	npm, pnpm, or Bun	vitest / jest
Python	pyproject.toml	uv	pytest
Rust	Cargo.toml	cargo	cargo test
Go	go.mod	go modules	go test ./...
Terraform	.tf files	providers	terraform validate

Put AGENTS.md instructions for each ecosystem in the Agent Instruction Files page.

Monorepos

Use a workspace tool for monorepos:

• Turborepo or Nx for JavaScript/TypeScript.
• pnpm workspaces for dependency management.
• Cargo workspaces for Rust.
• Go workspaces for Go modules.
• uv workspaces for Python.

Put a nested AGENTS.md in each package when a monorepo has multiple packages.

Citations

• Trunk-Based Development
• GitHub Flow
• GitHub Actions
• Microsoft Engineering Playbook
• semver.org
• mise
• Dev Container Specification

See Also

• Agent Instruction Files
• Language and Framework Stacks
• Infrastructure and Cloud