[globular-toast]

Definitely feature flags are the way to go. Having those code paths integrated early doesn't cost much and makes it basically free when you want to "merge" the feature into default.

This does require your software to have a decent architecture such that feature flags aren't littering every part of your codebase, though. Ideally you want something like a whole module/plugin being enabled/disabled right at the entrypoint of your program/module. But this also pays dividends in the long run.