Not if you structure your repo correctly. > not clear what code has and has not been deployed You can have your production machines deploy from specific branc

Not if you structure your repo correctly. > not clear what code has and has not been deployed You can have your production machines deploy from specific branches. In other words, master is the development branch, some-version-branch is the production branch. You can also do it vice versa. You can use tags. Lots of solutions. > code is not explicitly validated (automatically, manually, on a build/test lab) If you use the structure above, you wouldn't commit to a production branch unless you did that. Another solution is to force validation/testing using hooks before allowing a commit to a production branch on your development machine. > and it isn't clear who triggered the release. Not sure what you mean here ... every commit is recorded, so you always know who did what.