[Too]

Why do you need to maintain multiple versions? You should only need to maintain hotfixes on the last release branch. Once the next release is ready everybody who can update should take that release, any older releases become unsupported.

From a customer point of view a hotfix vs new release should be no difference. You just have to ensure that all releases are interface-compatible with the previous one. The cost of this is well worth it compared to the complexity of juggling multiple branches in parallel.

[nilsandrey]

I think I understand your point, but thinking about releasing a hotfix over an old version is a way of maintaining multiple versions... I work once with a team supporting multiple versions of a really complex app(in the sense of a lot of features and DB entities). They support his clients (on-premises) with eventual hotfixes, one service-pack and one version a year.

Some times they were working on changes on a release before a hotfix was addressed, and with cherry-pick's like operations, they took the changes of the hotfixes and applied to the service-pack and new versions with less effort than before they used the model.

With a dev team of 10 programmers, 20 on IT support and hundreds of client's deployments they build a profitable business (subscription-based and in-site support) where the branching model helps a lot.

They spend less time managing the releases, switching context for priority support and dealing with more changes in less time.