Benefits of using Trunk-based development
Reduced complexity is a major emphasis of trunk-based software design. Trunk based development is a required practice for continuous integration. Here if the build and test processes are automated then developers work on isolated, lengthy feature branches that are infrequently integrated into a shared branch, continuous integration is not living up to its potential.
- Allows continuous code integration:– In trunk based development model, there will be a repository with a steady stream of commits flowing into the main branch. By including an automated test suite and code coverage tracking or monitoring for the stream of commits that enables CI. When new code is merged into the trunk, automated integration and code coverage tests run to validate the code quality.
- Ensures continuous code review:– The rapid, small commits of trunk-based development make code review a more efficient process. With small branches, developers can quickly see and review small changes. This is far easier compared to a long-lived feature branch where a reviewer reads pages of code or manually inspects a large surface area of code changes.
- Foster collaboration:– Developers from companies can see all changes and can cross pollinate each others contributions.
- Enables consecutive production code releases:– The teams should make frequent, daily merges to the main branch. Trunk-based development strives to keep the trunk branch “green”, which means its ready to deploy at any commit. Automated tests, code coverage, and code reviews provides a trunk-based development project with the assurances its ready to deploy to production at any time. This gives team agility to frequently deploy to production and set further goals of daily production releases.
- Improve refactoring:– Decomposing an application story into a continuous small components takes less time.
Trunk-Based Development in Software Development
In earlier days of software development, programmers didn’t have the richness of modern version control systems but they developed two versions of their software concurrently as it means of monitoring small changes and backing them if possible and only in necessary conditions. As time increases it has become more costly, and inefficient.
At present various version control systems are developed and managed. It made it more mature, and various departments have merged which enables programmers to find bugs or errors more easily. As of today most developers hold one of the two development models in order to deliver quality software which is Git flow and trunk-based development. Trunk-based development is an additional open model since all developers have easier access to the main code which also enables teams to implement CI/CD and so on.