Feature Branches

A feature branch is the sort of branch that's been the dominant example in this chapter (the one you've been working on while Sally continues to work on /trunk). It's a temporary branch created to work on a complex change without interfering with the stability of /trunk. Unlike release branches (which may need to be supported forever), feature branches are born, used for a while, merged back to the trunk, then ultimately deleted. They have a finite span of usefulness...

source: http://chestofbooks.com/computers/revision-control/subversion-svn/Feature-Branches-Branchmerge-Commonpatterns-Feature.html
---