Stop Using Git Flow: Why Trunk-Based Development Wins

We have all been there. "Merge Week." The feature branch has been open for 3 months. You pull main and see 400 conflicts. You spend three days resolving them, only to realize you overwrote a critical bug fix from another team. This is the hell of Git Flow.

The Integration Gap

The core problem with long-lived branches is that they drift. Every day your branch is separate from main, it accumulates Integration Debt. The longer you wait, the more expensive it becomes to merge.

Trunk-Based Development flips this. You merge to main every single day. Sometimes multiple times a day.

"But I'll Break Production!"

This is the fear. If I merge incomplete code, won't users see broken features? No. Because you use Feature Flags.

You wrap your new code in a conditional: if (flags.newCheckout) return <NewCheckout />. The code is in production, but it is dormant. This allows you to integrate the code continuously without releasing the feature.

Reviewing Code

Trunk-based development forces you to write smaller PRs. A 200-line PR is easy to review. A 2,000-line PR gets a "Looks Good To Me" rubber stamp because nobody has the mental energy to parse it. Small batches reduce risk.

Tools for Safety

Before you commit, you need to know exactly what you changed. Don't rely on memory. Use a Diff Checker to visually verify your changes against the original file. Seeing the diff clearly helps catch debug statements (console.log) or accidental deletions before they pollute the main branch.