Git flow: How to reopen a finished feature branch

I started using git flow a few weeks ago after reading this article: A successful git branching model. Git flow isn't absolutely necessary to work with git, but it does a good job at organizing the work on branches.

Something I couldn't understand, reading the documentation is: When a feature branch is finished, the branch is merged into the develop branch. Then the feature branch is deleted. What if I want want to re-open the feature branch later?

The key thing here is to publish the feature branches on the remote repository:

$ git flow feature publish my_feature

Before finishing the branch, make sure that the remote repository has the latest commits:

$ git push

If your git config push.default setting is not simple, use the following instead (assuming origin is name of your remote repository):

$ git push origin my_feature

Then, finish your branch:

$ git flow feature finish my_feature

At this point, if there was no conflict, the my_feature branch has been deleted from you local repository, and you're now on the develop branch.

If you wish to continue your work on the my_feature branch, you can still have it back by tracking the branch from the remote repository (like other developers would do to have your feature branch in their local repository):

$ git flow feature track my_feature

This will allow you to finish and re-open feature branches, as long as you don't delete them from the remote repository.