Over the years I have seen many teams adopt GitFlow because it provides a clear separation between work in progress and code that is ready for production. It made sense in a world of slow CI pipelines, infrequent releases, and long stabilization periods. As software delivery practices evolved, the trade offs of this model changed significantly.
A useful way to compare branching strategies is to look at the cost of integration. How long does code remain unmerged. How expensive is it to bring work together. These factors shape delivery performance in ways that become visible only over time.
The hidden cost of long lived branches
GitFlow relies on parallel branches such as develop and release/*. These branches isolate work, but they also accumulate divergence. Divergence makes integration more expensive because reconciling two versions of the same codebase becomes harder as time passes.
In lean vocabulary, long lived branches behave like inventory. Work sits in isolation, waiting to be integrated. The longer it waits, the more difficult the integration becomes.
Trunk Based Development reduces this inventory by keeping a single main line of development. Frequent merging keeps the gap between individual contributions very small. Small gaps are inexpensive to integrate. Large gaps can become projects on their own.
Coordination overhead and workflow friction
Branching models also influence how much coordination a team must perform. GitFlow introduces several recurring decisions. Developers need to determine where new work should branch from, when to cut a release, how to move hotfixes across branches, and how to manage stabilization while new features continue.
Individually these decisions are manageable. Taken together they produce ongoing coordination work that reduces flow.
Trunk Based Development has far fewer moving parts. Most changes branch from main and merge back into it. Release boundaries are defined by tags rather than branches. Hotfixes follow a simple pattern: branch from the release tag, apply the fix, tag the result, merge back to main. This clarity reduces both cognitive load and operational friction.
Releases as immutable artifacts
GitFlow uses branches as release markers. Branches are mutable by nature. They can change accidentally if commits or merges land in the wrong place.
Modern deployment pipelines work more reliably when releases are modeled as immutable artifacts. Git tags provide this property. A tag creates a fixed reference to a specific snapshot of the code. Pipelines that trigger on tags build a known and unchanging version.
Trunk Based Development uses tags for releases rather than long lived branches. This simplifies pipelines and avoids accidental drift.
Hotfix workflows and operational clarity
Hotfixes expose the practical differences between branching strategies. In GitFlow a hotfix must be applied to several branches to keep them aligned. This is fragile when teams are under time pressure.
In Trunk Based Development the workflow is linear. A hotfix starts from the release tag, is validated, tagged, and merged back into main. This aligns with how modern CI and CD systems treat releases as snapshots rather than separate development branches.
How infrastructure changes the branching trade offs
GitFlow was created during a period with different constraints. CI was slower, deployments were manual, and long stabilization windows were normal. Several improvements changed those constraints:
- automated tests and checks
- fast CI pipelines
- feature flags for incomplete work
- ephemeral environments
- tag based deployment pipelines
- reliable rollback mechanisms
As these capabilities matured, the need for long lived branches decreased. Integration is no longer costly enough to justify isolating work for extended periods. Trunk Based Development benefits directly from this shift because continuous integration is both safe and economical.
Situations where GitFlow still fits
There are environments where GitFlow remains useful. Teams shipping on premise or regulated software often require release branches for audit or compliance reasons. In those settings the branch exists primarily as a formal artifact.
For most SaaS, web, cloud, and microservices teams frequent delivery is the norm. In these cases GitFlow introduces more ceremony than value.
Conclusion
Branching strategies exist to manage integration risk. GitFlow does this by isolating work and delaying integration. Trunk Based Development does it by integrating continuously and relying on automation to maintain stability.
As engineering practices and tooling evolved, the economics of integration changed. The model that minimizes divergence and coordination overhead produces more predictable delivery. In most modern environments Trunk Based Development aligns far more closely with how teams build and ship software.