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.

Answer 1

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

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

Answer 2

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