by John Turner
Posted on August 16, 2011
Over the past couple of days, I have spent quite a bit of time reading around code branching strategies and the consequences of choosing one strategy over another. I found that Advanced SCM Branching Strategies by Stephen Vance gives a good overview of the practice and some of the considerations to be made when choosing a branching strategy.
Or course more recently, and perhaps as a consequence of SCM tools becoming more adept at textual merging, feature branching has risen to prominence. As he is inclined to do, Martin Fowler articulately expresses his views on why feature branching should be avoided when possible and the inherent conflict between feature branching and continuous integration. I must say that I find it hard to disagree with his reasoning (see also a short Q & A with Jez Humble
So what alternative does he propose? Martin suggests applying Feature Toggle and Branch by Abstraction. I’ll leave it to you to read the background, but the removal of branching and merging from a teams development activity is certainly a big carrot.