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Branch Types

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Overview

Branching Overview

Trunk-based development uses exactly three branch types:

  1. Trunk (main) - Single source of truth
  2. Topic branches - Short-lived development work
  3. Release branches - Isolate releases (RA pattern only)

Trunk (Main)

Definition: The single branch representing the trunk.

Characteristics:

  • Always deployable
  • Protected - no direct commits
  • All changes via merge request
  • Updated multiple times per day
  • Only meaningful version of the code

Access:

  • Read: All developers
  • Write: Via approved merge requests only

Purpose: Single source of truth, continuous integration point, release candidate source.

Topic Branches

Definition: Short-lived branches for individual changes.

Characteristics:

  • Branched from trunk (or occasionally release branch)
  • Live for hours to maximum 2 days
  • Squash-merged to preserve clean history
  • Deleted immediately after merge

One topic branch = One trunk commit after squash merge

Naming Convention:

Prefer topic/[user]/[topic-moniker] (e.g., topic/ausr/fix-build), but really any topic branch name goes (anything not main or release* is considered a topic).

Only trunk (main) and release (release/[x]) branch names are strictly enforced.

Purpose: Isolate work in progress, enable code review, provide temporary workspace.

Topic branches are NOT feature branches:

Topic Branches Feature Branches
Live hours Live weeks/months
Result in single squash commit Accumulate many commits
Focused on one change Accumulate unrelated changes
Integrate continuously Defer integration

Release Branches

Definition: Short branches isolating releases.

Characteristics:

  • Created from trunk at Stage 8 (Start Release)
  • Short-lived (days to weeks)
  • Only critical fixes allowed
  • Fixes cherry-picked back to trunk
  • Used in Release Approval (RA) pattern only

Naming Convention:

release/1         # First release
release/2         # Second release
release/10        # Tenth release
release/product-name/5   # Fifth release of product-name (monorepo)

Note: The [x] is an incremental integer release number, NOT a semantic version. Release 10 might be tagged as v1.2.0, but the branch name uses the release count.

Purpose: Isolate release for validation, allow trunk to continue evolving, apply critical fixes without trunk changes.

Not used in Continuous Deployment (CDe) pattern - trunk deploys directly to production.

Spike Branches

Definition: Experimental branches that are never merged.

Characteristics:

  • Used for exploration and prototyping
  • Never progress past Merge Request stage
  • May be archived for reference
  • No expectation of merge

Purpose: Allow experimentation without committing to integration.

Branch Flow Summary

Topic Branch → (Squash Merge) → Trunk → (Branch) → Release Branch
                                  ↓
                            (CDe: Direct)
                                  ↓
                             Production

RA Pattern: Topic → Trunk → Release → Production

CDe Pattern: Topic → Trunk → Production (no release branch)

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