Patterns for Managing Source Code Branches

In my conversations with software developers, a regular topic of
controversy is how manage source code branching. Tools like git make it
easy to create branches, but managing them to improve coordination and
minimize the costs of integration unearths plenty of difficulties. I find
it useful to think of the trade-offs around branching as a series of
patterns, and have spent the last couple of months writing these patterns
into a coherent shape.

Today I'll start sharing these, with the foundation of thinking of
source branching as a pattern itself. An important point here is that the
conceptual notion of a branch is broader than what source code management
systems label as branches.

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