Introduction to Trunk-Based Development
Bucket's CTO and co-founder, Ron Cohen, recently wrote an introduction post on the topic, and below are my key takeaways.
Key takeaways
In software engineering, trunk-based development (TBD) is a strategy to manage git workflows that favours merging commits into the main branch even before the feature is fully complete, instead of the git flow that favours working on long-lived branches until features are 100% complete.
Advantages
Limit merge conflicts
Streamline integrations
Ship faster product updates
Getting started with trunk-based development
If you want to get started with trunk-based development, start with:
Reducing the number of branches
Creating small, frequent pull requests (PR) to facilitate code reviews
Committing to reviewing pull requests quickly
Introducing feature flags
With trunk-based development, you move the branching into the code and need to introduce a new branching mechanism — feature flags
Feature flags could be static or dynamic depending on your stack
They help you ship continuously without waiting for you to complete everything fully
Final thoughts
Trunk-based development helps ship new features faster, reducing merge conflicts with small, frequent changes.
Want to learn more? Read the full article on bucket.co.
Follow us bucketdotco on X for more insights and best practices on trunk-based development.
We're crafting the feature flagging tool purpose-built for B2B SaaS companies.
