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## The Problem with Long-Lived Branches If your feature branches live for more than a few days, you're setting yourself up for merge conflicts, stale reviews, and integration headaches. ## Trunk-Based Development The solution is simple: everyone commits to main (or a single trunk branch) multiple times per day. ``` main ─── A ─── B ─── C ─── D ─── E │ │ └─ fix ─────┘ (short-lived, < 1 day) ``` ## Conventional Commits Structure your commit messages for automated changelogs: ``` feat: add user authentication with OAuth 2.0 fix: resolve race condition in checkout flow docs: update API reference for v3 endpoints perf: optimize image loading with lazy hydration ``` > **Tip:** Use commitlint and husky to enforce conventional commits in your CI pipeline. ## The Rebase vs Merge Verdict Use rebase for feature branches, merge for integration: ```bash # On your feature branch, rebase onto main git rebase main # On main, merge the feature (creates a merge commit) git merge --no-ff feature/auth ``` This gives you clean, linear history on feature branches and clear merge points on main. ## Automated Releases Combine conventional commits with semantic-release: ```yaml # .github/workflows/release.yml - uses: semantic-release/semantic-release with: branches: [main] ``` Every push to main automatically: 1. Determines the version bump (major/minor/patch) 2. Generates the changelog 3. Creates a GitHub release 4. Publishes to npm