Other terms for trunk include baseline, mainline, and master, though in some cases these are used with similar but distinct senses – see version control § Common terminology.
A branch not intended to be merged (e.g. because it has been relicensed under an incompatible license by a third party, or it attempts to serve a different purpose) is usually called a fork.
[2] Large projects require many roles to be filled, including developers, build managers, and quality assurance personnel.
Branches allow contributors to isolate changes without destabilizing the codebase, for example, fixes for bugs, new features,[3] and versions integration.
In the open source community, the notion of release is typically metaphorical, since anyone can usually check out any desired version, whether it be in the development branch or not.
Git uses "master" by default, although GitHub[4][5] and GitLab switched to "main" after the murder of George Floyd.
In CVSNT, a shadow or magic branch "shadows" changes made in the upstream branch, to make it easier to maintain small changes (cvc is an open-source package building system[citation needed] incorporating a revision-control system for packages produced by rPath.)