Add daily email for 2025-02-20

Don't branch, use feature toggles

source/_daily_emails/2025-02-20.md

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+---
+title: Don't branch, use feature toggles
+date: 2025-02-20
+permalink: daily/2025/02/20/toggles
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - deployments
+  - git
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+  If feature branches cause conflicts, what is the alternative?
+---
+
+If [feature branches cause conflicts][0], what is the alternative?
+
+Don't branch.
+
+Keep all changes on a single branch and avoid merge conflicts between branches by not having branches.
+
+But how can you avoid releasing changes before they are ready?
+
+You can have a local branch with your changes that you don't push and rebase locally, but then [you're not doing continuous integration][1] and you're just as likely to get conflicts and have incompatible code.
+
+One of the main benefits of trunk-based development, where everything is on a single branch, is that everyone's work always works together.
+
+The better option is to use feature toggles (aka feature flags).
+
+Wrapping code in feature toggles separates deploying the code from releasing the feature.
+
+The code can be released, but the feature isn't active until the toggle is enabled.
+
+This means everyone can work on the same branch and continuously deploy changes whilst being selective about the features that are visible to the end users.
+
+If you have multiple environments, the same code can be used with different toggles enabled to allow for testing different features.
+
+Then, once the feature is ready to be enabled, there is no deployment needed.
+
+The code is already there - it just needs to be enabled.
+
+For Drupal, there is a [Feature Toggle module][2] and [an extension that I wrote][3] that make it easy to use and manage feature toggles by just logging into the admin UI and selecting the active toggles you want.
+
+And, if an issue is discovered, it can also be easily disabled [without needing to roll back to the previous version][4].
+
+[0]: {{site.url}}/daily/2025/02/18/conflicts
+[1]: {{site.url}}/daily/2025/02/17/ci-cd
+[2]: https://www.drupal.org/project/feature_toggle
+[3]: https://www.drupal.org/project/feature_toggle_twig
+[4]: {{site.url}}/daily/2025/02/19/back-or-forward