Is it safe to use a subversion feature branch after reintegrate-merged to trunk?

Question

Must a feature branch be deleted after it\'s merged (reintegrated) back to trunk?

I prefer to constantly merge changes back and forth from my feature branch - I beli

Answer 1

This all depends on your personal opinion, and on the number of people merging into trunk.

If you have a lot of people merging in, then it is probably better to only merge a branch once it is finished with, and then to delete it (you can always access it by going back to the last revision where it existed). If you try to continuously merge in this situation you will just confuse yourself.

However, if you don't have many sub-branches, and you are using subversion 1.5+, you can get away with this, and it can help to avoid merge conficts.

Of course, if your "trunk" is used as a beta/release candidate/release repository, then you sholdn't do this.