Do you feel comfortable merging code?

Question

This morning, I read two opinions on refactoring.

• Opinion 1 (Page not present)
• Opinion 2 (Page not present)

They recommend branching (and s

Answer 1

Do you feel comfortable branching code?

It really depends of the tool I'm using. With Starteam, branching is indeed non trivial (TBH, Starteam sucks at branching). With Git, branching is a regular activity and is very easy.

Do you branch code for reasons other than freezing a release candidate?

Well, this really depends of your version control pattern but the short answer is yes. Actually, I suggest to read the following articles:

• Version Control for Multiple Agile Teams by Henrik Kniberg
• FeatureBranch by Martin Fowler

I really like the pattern described in the first article and it can be applied with any (non Distributed) Version Control System, including Starteam.

I might consider the second approach (actually, a mix of the both strategies) with (and only with) a Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) like Git, Mercurial...