Git Branching Strategies: Trunk-Based, GitHub Flow, and When to Use What

Calendar February 22, 2026
Cicd
Intermediate
Git-Workflow-Design, Branch-Management, Release-Engineering
Git, Branching, Workflows, Github, Version-Control
Git, Github

Git Branching Strategies#

Choosing a branching strategy is choosing your team’s speed limit. The wrong model introduces merge conflicts, stale branches, and release bottlenecks. The right model depends on how you deploy, how big your team is, and how much you trust your test suite.

Trunk-Based Development#

Everyone commits to main (or very short-lived branches that merge within hours). No long-running feature branches. No develop branch. No release branches unless you need to patch old versions.

Release Management Patterns: Versioning, Changelog Generation, Branching, Rollbacks, and Progressive Rollouts

Calendar February 22, 2026
Cicd
Intermediate
Release-Engineering, Version-Management, Rollback-Procedures, Deployment-Strategy
Release-Management, Semantic-Versioning, Changelog, Rollback, Progressive-Rollout, Branching, Release-Gates, Canary, Blue-Green
Git, Semantic-Release, Conventional-Commits, Helm, Kubectl, Argocd

Release Management Patterns#

Releasing software is more than merging to main and deploying. A disciplined release process ensures that every version is identifiable, every change is documented, every deployment is reversible, and failures are contained before they reach all users. This operational sequence walks through each phase of a production release workflow.

Phase 1 – Semantic Versioning#

Step 1: Adopt Semantic Versioning#

Semantic versioning (semver) communicates the impact of changes through the version number itself: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH.