trunk-based development

Paul Hammant, independent consultant, joins host Giovanni Asproni to speak about trunk-based development—a version control management practice in which developers merge small, frequent updates to a core “trunk” or main branch. The episode explores the technique in some detail, including its pros and cons and some examples from real projects, and offers suggestions on how to get started. The conversation touches on a set of related topics, including code reviews, feature flags, continuous integration, and testing.

Jason Adam is a software with a non-traditional background in biology, business development, and data analytics. Now he's active as a developer, and on the lookout for proven practices he can introduce to his team. On this episode we talk about Trunk-Based Development, and the related topics of continuous integration and deployment, infrastruture as code, and much more.

In this episode

• How Trunk-based development differs from GitFlow and other branching strategies
• Two flavors of trunk-based development
• How Trunk-based development fits into the larger picture of continuous integration and continuous delivery
• Techniques for working in smaller batches
• How test-driven development enhances trunk-based development
• Using feature flags for smaller batches
• How to keep pull requests small
• Cherry-picking small changes out of a larger pull request
• How Infrastructure-as-Code works with CI and CD

Resources

• Book: Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and Dave Farley
• Book: Domain-Driven Design by Eric Evans
• Book: Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers
• Book: Clean Architecture by Robert Martin

Guest
Jason Adam
Web site & newsletter: functionalbits.io

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Watch this episode on YouTube.