CI/CD & GitOps Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Nov 11, 2025 4 min read

Feature Flag vs Release Branches

Two ways to manage in-progress work.

Feature flag

Trunk-based. Code merged behind flag.

Easier integration.

Release branch

Long-lived branch. Merge at release.

Coordination overhead.

Decide

Flag for trunk-based teams. Branch for release-train teams.

Most modern: flag.