A separate line of development in version control where new functionality is built in isolation from the main codebase. It allows developers to work on features without affecting the stable main branch until the work is complete.
Combines 'feature' from Latin 'factura' (a making) and 'branch' from Old French 'branche.' The practice emerged with distributed version control systems like Git in the 2000s, enabling more flexible development workflows.
Try Another Word