Best branching strategy when doing continuous integration?

Question

What is the best branching strategy to use when you want to do continuous integration?

1. Release Branching: develop on trunk, keep a branch for each release.
2. Feature Branching: develop each feature in a separate branch, only merge once stable.

Does it make sense to use both of these strategies together? As in, you branch for each release but you also branch for large features? Does one of these strategies mesh better with continuous integration? Would using continuous integration even make sense when using an unstable trunk?

Answer 1

I find the topic really interesting since I heavily rely on branches on my daily job.

• I remember Mark Shuttleworth proposing a model about keeping the main branch pristine while going beyond conventional CI. I posted about it here.
• Since I'm familiar with Cruise Control, I also blogged about task branches and CI here. It's an step by step tutorial explaning how to do it with Plastic SCM.
• Finally, I found some of the topics about CI (and potentially talking about branching) at Duvall's book on CI very interesting too.

Hope you find the links interesting.