Engineering Craft › Branching & Releases

Feature Branch

A short-lived branch for one change.

Also known as: feature branches, topic branch, short-lived branch

A feature branch is a short-lived branch created to do one piece of work, such as a feature, a fix or an experiment, separate from the main line. When it’s done and reviewed, it’s merged back and deleted.

git switch main
git pull
git switch -c feat/export-csv      # start from an up-to-date main
# ...commit as you go...
git push -u origin feat/export-csv
# open a pull request, get review, merge, delete the branch

Why use them

• Isolation: unfinished work doesn’t break main or other people’s work.
• A natural unit for review. One branch becomes one pull request.
• Easy to abandon or park: delete the branch.
• Parallel work by several people.

Keep them short

The longer a branch lives, the further it drifts from main, and the more painful merging becomes (merge conflicts). Aim for days, not weeks.

• Make the change small (small PRs), and split big features into pieces that can merge one at a time.
• Merge or rebase main into your branch regularly to stay current (merge vs rebase).
• Use feature flags to merge unfinished work safely, hidden from users, when a feature can’t be done in a few days (feature flags).

Habits

• Name it clearly (branch naming).
• One purpose per branch.
• Delete it after merging. The commits are safe in main.
• Don’t build a branch on top of another unmerged branch unless you mean to (stacked PRs).

Teams that merge to main many times a day sometimes skip long-lived feature branches entirely (trunk-based development). Feature branches are the common middle ground (GitHub flow).