Long-Running Features (Flags)

Concept

Long-lived feature branches are a bad default — they accumulate conflicts, drift from main, and are painful to review.

Better: merge incomplete features into main behind a feature flag.

if (flags.isEnabled('new_search', user)) {
  return newSearch();
}
return legacySearch();

Workflow:

Benefits:

No branch drift; everyone integrates daily.
Decouple deploy from release — a deploy makes the code live, the flag flip makes the feature visible.
Easy kill switch if production goes sideways.

Tools: LaunchDarkly, ConfigCat, GrowthBook, Unleash, or a simple feature_flags table in Postgres.

Challenge

Create a short-lived feature branch