What branching strategy should I use during the development/maintenance of a web application?

Question

I am trying to decide on the best branching strategy for a web application project. Here is what I have come up with until now and I would greatly appreciate any comments an

Answer 1

These choices are not mutually exclusive - use both. They solve different problems:

"Branch by release" - release branch is used to ensure you can back to the source used to produce the current live version (or previous released versions) while the next version is in development. E.g. This is in order to make changes to the release version for bug fixes or backpatch features from the current development trunk.

"Branch by feature" - used to keep a stable development trunk at all times, which is particularly useful for multiple developers and for experimental "maybe" features.

I would use both, but you can forego one of the approaches if the problem it solves doesn't apply to you or if you have a different solution that problem.

I strongly recommend using a modern DVCS like git or Mercurial. They are geared at parallel development, so they store changes differently than older systems, which makes merging much saner.