Chuck Walrad and Darrel Strom wrote an article on what they call “branch-by-purpose” model of branching: “The Importance of Branching Models in SCM”.
As for me, this model seems to be the natural choice for branching in presense of multiple parallel development lines and many releases. Unfortunately the article has a couple of weak points. First, it is written in a horrible style of “first we discuss the obvious draw-backs of inadequate solution, never saying that it is actually not recommended; then we finally `discover’ the correct and simple one”. Why waste time?
Also, this article is written in somewhat dry and formal manner, but I guess this is pre-requisite for IEEE publication.
Nevertheless, this is worth a read, just skip the “Branch-by-release model” and “Build-by-bug-number syndrome” chapters and read them after you finish the rest.
Recent posts on similar topics
- AccuRev streams vs branches - January 14th, 2008
- Mark Shuttleworth on renaming and merging - October 7th, 2007
- Upgrading Drupal with Git - August 2nd, 2007
- Visual Studio Team System Guidance - March 26th, 2007
- Brian Harry: "Branch structure in Developer Division at Microsoft" - December 24th, 2006