Situations for using SNiFF+'s branch support

We strongly recommend that your Working Environments Administrator create and implement policies for working in branches. While branch support offers great opportunities, there is an inherent danger in allowing team members to create branches on their own.
You might choose to use SNiFF+'s branch support for one of the following situations:

- Parallel development -- Stable versions of your software system are maintained in the main trunk of your files' version tree. Your team may also be working on alternative or experimental development approaches -- which could be carried out on branches.
- Temporary fixes and/or customization -- You may be asked by a customer to develop a site-specific version of your software system. You don't want this work to affect the main development work on the software system. You could create a temporary branch for the customization, and then reintegrate this branch with the main trunk at a later, opportune time.
- Conflicting updates -- A member of your team might have an exclusive lock on a file that you also need to modify. You could do one of the following:

- Break his/her exclusive lock. This really isn't a good choice.
- Check out the same file version with a concurrent lock. This results in a local, writable copy of the file in your PWE. After making and testing your modifications, you can create a branch and check the file in on the branch. Your work can then be merged with the work of your team member at a later time.