Not the same at all. Git-flow is worse than merging 'next' into 'master' before a release, which is a huge no-no. With gitworkflows(7), new topic branches sta

Not the same at all. Git-flow is worse than merging 'next' into 'master' before a release, which is a huge no-no. With gitworkflows(7), new topic branches start from 'master', merge to 'next' when thought to be complete, may receive additional patches while there (remerging to 'next'), and may fail to "graduate" to 'master' (either being discarded by reverting in 'next', or just not selected for this release). When complete, the topic branch is merged to 'master'. 'next' is periodically discarded (usually after a release). This means that the sometimes messy and occasionally broken state in 'next' does not remain in the history and is not used for new development, and some parts of 'next' will not be part of the permanent history. With gitworkflows(7), the history that eventually makes it to 'master' is only complete and fully-tested features (demonstrably so, because it has been in 'next' already). Gitworkflows(7) gives you cleaner history, a more stable 'master', and makes releasing less disruptive.