Add daily email for 2025-02-18

Feature branches cause merge conflicts

source/_daily_emails/2025-02-18.md

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+---
+title: Feature branches cause merge conflicts
+date: 2025-02-18
+permalink: daily/2025/02/18/conflicts
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - git
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+  PSA: feature branches cause merge conflicts.
+---
+
+A common approach I see on software projects is where Developers create separate Git branches for each task they work on.
+
+This commonly matches issues or ticket on a sprint board or issue tracker.
+
+Each ticket is worked on independently and merged into a long-lived mainline branch once complete.
+
+This type of approach is commonly called Git Flow or GitHub Flow.
+
+It's something [I've given presentations][0] on in the past.
+
+A common downfall is that different branches can conflict with each other - either due to a merge conflict where the same lines are changed in different branches, or incompatible code is written that works separately but not when merged together.
+
+I used to work this way, even when working on projects as the only Developer.
+
+One time, I was demoing two features to a client and needed to switch branches and doing so broke what it was trying to show.
+
+These days, I avoid conflicts between branches by not branching.
+
+Everyone works on a single branch and pulls and pushes changes regularly.
+
+If you're [doing continuous integration][1], that should be once a day as an absolute minimum.
+
+I do [test-driven development][2] and usually commit after each passing test.
+
+If you work on a single branch and pull and push changes regularly, you're much less likely to get merge conflicts and Developers can focus on pushing code instead of fixing merge conflicts.
+
+[0]: {{site.url}}/presentations/git-flow
+[1]: {{site.url}}/daily/2025/02/17/ci-cd
+[2]: {{site.url}}/atdc