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As a newbie to SVN, I'm wondering if there are any advantages to creating "branches" if I'm going to be a single developer on a project.

Thanks!

Eric
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  • Branches let you keep things you're working on separate from each other, and also let you separate work done on individual releases from work done on mainline; that latter is entirely essential to maintenance. – Charles Duffy Aug 28 '13 at 17:13
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    http://stackoverflow.com/q/360887/62576 – Ken White Aug 28 '13 at 17:14

2 Answers2

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I would not create branches during normal development but would TAG releases. Then if I find that I have a release that I have to support with a single bug fix (i.e. a dot release) I could create a branch from that tag and check in my fix to the trunk and the release branch so that I can get quick fixes out without releasing unfinished features.

digitaljoel
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Just because you're a single developer, it doesn't mean that you won't have a need for branches on occasion.

I'm a single developer on one of my apps at work. I have branched on occasion because I'm working on a large-scale change to the system that takes several weeks/months to build out (new features plus some refactoring) while having to maintain the current codebase.

90% of the time, I don't branch, as it's not necessary for what I'm doing. That remaining 10% of the time, it can be a lifesaver.

I do tag all of my releases, but that's a separate discussion altogether - those tags are used as easy references to the state of the code at a point in time, for build/deploy purposes for our various environments. It also gives me a handy way to back out a change by reverting back to the previous tag.

alroc
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