Is it a good practice to use branches to maintain different editions of the same software?

Posted by Tamás Szelei on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Tamás Szelei
Published on 2012-02-13T08:18:16Z Indexed on 2014/06/12 9:40 UTC
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We have a product that has a few different editions. The differences are minor: different strings here and there, very little additional logic in one, very little difference in logic in the other. When the software is being developed, most changes need to be added to each edition; however, there are a few that don't and a few that needs to differ. Is it a valid use of branches if I have release-editionA and release-editionB (..etc) branches? Are there any gotchas? Good practices?

Update: Thanks for the insight everyone, lots of good answers here. The general consensus seems to be that it is a bad idea to use branches for this purpose. For anyone wondering, my final solution to the problem is to externalize strings as configuration, and externalize the differing logic as plugins or scripts.

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