Trunk-Based Development is a branching strategy in Git that focuses on maintaining a single main branch ( trunk ) as the source of truth for the project.
Developers create short-lived branches to implement specific changes and quickly merge them back into trunk . This methodology encourages continuous integration and agile development, ensuring attorney email list that code is always in a deployable state.
Key Features of Trunk-Based Development:
Main branch ( Trunk ): It is the only persistent branch where all changes are integrated continuously.
Short-lived feature branches: Developers create temporary branches to implement new features, bug fixes, or minor improvements, and merge them as soon as possible.
Advantages of Trunk-Based Development:
Simplicity and speed: The absence of multiple development branches reduces the complexity of version management. Teams can work quickly by not having to coordinate multiple parallel branches.
Continuous Integration: Encourages constant integration, which minimizes merge conflicts and issues related to version differences. It also allows for early detection of errors, thanks to automated testing at each merge.
Code quality: By keeping code in a production-ready state at all times, developers are forced to reduce the risk of serious failures during releases. But this requires thorough testing and automated validations at every integration.
Disadvantages of Trunk-Based Development:
Frequent merges: Constant integrations require special attention to avoid conflicts. Developers must maintain continuous communication and development discipline to avoid integration overload.
Complex projects: Not suitable for projects with long development cycles or complex releases, where dedicated branch management may be necessary. Extensive functionalities may require additional techniques, such as “Feature Toggles” or “Flags” , to enable or disable features still in development.
Recommendation for Trunk-Based Development:
Adopting Trunk-Based Development can be a good strategy if your team follows agile methodologies and values continuous integration and fast development cycles. It is especially effective for small to medium-sized teams focused on frequent deliveries and high code quality. However, it is not ideal for projects that require strict release control, long-lived features, or significant development complexity.