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Branching strategies–Blog series

There is a lot of discussion going on about branching strategies and how a good branching strategy looks like.

My preferred branching strategy has only 2 rules:

  • Rule #1 – Don’t branch
  • Rule #2 – Go read Rule #1

Branching should be an exceptional case as every branch introduces a merge cost (and this cost can be high!). Of course in reality, it’s not always that simple.

With the renewed vibe around Continuous Integration and DevOps, a good branching strategy is crucial. One blog series I recommend reading is Version Control Strategies:

This series of articles describes a taxonomy for different types of Feature Branching – developers working on branches in isolation from trunk – and how Continuous Integration is impacted by Feature Branching variants.

  1. Organisation Antipattern: Release Feature Branching – the what, why, and how of long-lived feature branches
  2. Organisation Pattern: Trunk Based Development – the what, why, and how of trunk development
  3. Organisation Antipattern: Integration Feature Branching – the what, why, and how of long-lived integration branches
  4. Organisation Antipattern: Build Feature Branching – the what, why, and how of short-lived feature branches
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