A team practicing continuous integration wants every developer to integrate into the shared line at least daily, while still releasing unfinished functionality without exposing it to customers. Which arrangement fits?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D
Trunk-based development keeps branches short and integrates them into a single shared line frequently, often daily. To keep incomplete work out of users' sight while it is still merging, teams use feature toggles that hide the new code path. The combination reduces merge pain and surfaces integration problems early. Long isolated branches, per-environment branches and monthly squad lines all postpone integration, which increases conflicts and blurs what is actually ready to ship.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. A feature branch kept until release accumulates divergence from the shared line, producing large merges and late discovery of conflicts with other people's changes.
- B. Environment-specific branches that receive code only at release time defer integration until the last moment, which is the pattern that trunk-based practice seeks to avoid.
- C. Monthly merges across squad lines are infrequent enough that integration problems accumulate for weeks, the opposite of the frequent integration the practice expects.