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The focus of trunk-based development is to have the team continuously integrate around a single main line of code, minimizing long-term branches.
The underlying judgment is: the longer a branch exists, the greater the integration risk, the later the feedback, and the harder it is to handle conflicts and semantic divergences.
The core reason large-scale teams adopt trunk-based development is that it exposes complexity early into daily integration, testing, and reviews.
| Prerequisite | Description |
|---|---|
| Fast CI | Rapid feedback is required before and after changes are merged |
| Small Changes | Every commit and PR must be small enough to facilitate review and rollback |
| Code Ownership | Critical paths need responsible people for review |
| Automated Testing | Trunk stability relies on reliable test signals |
| Feature Flags | Unfinished capabilities must not be exposed directly to users |
| Fast Rollback | Must be able to quickly undo changes when the trunk encounters issues |
Without these prerequisites, trunk-based development becomes “everyone just dumping code straight into the main branch.”
Trunk-based development does not mean having absolutely no branches.
A more realistic approach is:
short-lived branch -> review -> main -> CI -> release
Long-term branches delay risks until the day of merging.
Trunk-based development breaks risks into small pieces, handling them in daily commits and checks.
The closer the mainline is to production, the easier it is to locate problems.
When production versions can be traced back to clear commits or tags on the mainline, both rollbacks and auditing become easier.
CI, code search, dependency analysis, code ownership, and release systems can all build unified models around the mainline.
Multiple long-term branches would cause the complexity of these capabilities to increase rapidly.
Do not strive for “pure trunk-based development” right from the start.
A more stable sequence is:
Suitable for:
Not suitable for:
Trunk-based development is not a lightweight process slogan; it is the result of a set of engineering capabilities.
If a team wants to use it, they must simultaneously build:
These capabilities are more important than “whether to keep only one main branch.”