title: What is the state of the art of continuous integration vs feature branch as of early 2015?
body: <p>I'm kind of new into the world of continuous integration.</p>
  
  <p>Because i want to practice CI/CD properly i try to read about the best practices but it is quite of a puzzle to me. </p>
  
  <p>I wonder if someone with experience could let me know as of today what is the state of the practice with respect to the following matter:</p>
  
  <p>"Feature branch / branch by feature" and  CI. </p>
  
  <p>By this i mean that i found that the part in which people are struggling the most is actually about: </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>The practice of CI that requires frequent integration (in mainline)
    and the development practice that encourage feature driven
    development.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>From what i red there is a tension between falling in feature isolation and integrating feature even if not finished. </p>
  
  <p>Hence i would like to know, what is the state of that matter today. </p>
  
  <p>I saw things like branch by abstraction and feature toggles, but also other solution that are not clear to me yet but who seem to relies on tools to manage some automatic merge, that first merge and test the branch, and merging it back in the main line. </p>
  
  <p>Sounds like tool like Teamcity and Bomboo have support for that. Less clear on jenkins grounds. </p>
  
  <p>Hence if one could help map out the state of the art for that specific issue i would appreciate</p>