Prefer trunk-based development over other branching models

One-line summary

A source-control branching model, where developers collaborate on code in a single branch called ‘trunk’¹, resist any pressure to create other long-lived development branches by employing documented techniques. They therefore avoid merge hell, do not break the build, and live happily ever after.

Claims

• You should do Trunk-Based Development instead of GitFlow and other branching models that feature multiple long-running branches
• You can either do a direct to trunk commit/push (v small teams) or a Pull-Request workflow as long as those feature branches are short-lived and the product of a single person.

For small teams

At scale

Notes

• Trunk-Based Development is a key enabler of Continuous Integration and by extension Continuous Delivery. (…) [It] ensures the codebase is always releasable on demand and helps to make Continuous Delivery a reality.
• The largest of development organizations, like Google (as mentioned) and Facebook practice it at scale.
• Very similar to GitHub flow