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by jeffbee 1227 days ago
I of course cannot support dogma when it comes to software development. Pragmatism carries the day every time. But rare cases where a fix from head has to be edited to apply on a release branch does not invalidate the other advantages of trunk-based development, and there are ways to avoid the need to do such edits, including making sure that the pace of retirement of old releases is consistent with the pace of development on mainline.
1 comments

Yes, agreed. Unfortunately as with most software development process fads, most of the TBD advocates I've met fail to understand that nuance.

Mind you, I've been "doing TDB or a variation of it," and advocating for it for as long as I can remember. Still, as soon as TBD was given a name and evangelists started sprawling and calling me a heretic because I favoured pragmatism in many instances, I started disliking the dogma as a whole.

I'm fine with using it as a discussion starter. Always look at principles and outcomes though. If the dogma gets in the way, discard the dogma and do what will work given your teams, their culture and their maturity.