What are the benefits of "Staircase" branching?
branch, version, version-control
Solution
This method will bite you in the derriere the moment you want to create multiple branches and develop against them concurrently. Merging back to the trunk allows you to have parallel branches and easily bring them together one branch at a time.
Problem
I've encountered a project where we use staircase branching. To clarify, this is the approach where code is branched for development and when the development completes, rather than cutting back to a trunk/main line, the dev branch is designated as the live code set and a new branch is taken from it. This continues ad infinitum. I personally prefer the cut back to a trunk approach to maintain one single "live" codeset. However I am wondering if there are any compeling benefits to the staircase approach. Thanks, Tom