Feature Branches

How do you manage development when two or more people (or teams) are making major incompatible changes at the same time? The answer is to create branches in your version control repository, but that can go sour in many ways. If you’d like some advice on how to do it right, check out:

• “High-Level Best Practices in Software Configuration Management” from the folks who make Perforce (which is still my favorite version control system). What they have to say is relevant to any project, no matter how it manages files.
• Martin Fowler’s latest blog post. Martin has been coding, thinking, and writing better than almost anyone for a long time; you’ll probably enjoy many of his other posts as well.