The point is that if you're not continually merging development down into your feature branch, then rebasing becomes overly difficult. Merging can introduce bug

The point is that if you're not continually merging development down into your feature branch, then rebasing becomes overly difficult. Merging can introduce bugs if not done correctly. At my company, we eschewed feature branches about a year ago. We have two branches - development and main, with a branch ("tag" in git speak, we use TFS) created for each release of our product (we're a software company, not a service company). Development happens in the development branch, and is merged up into the main branch after code freeze. This does not preclude us from releasing often. With judicious use of feature toggles, it's simple to release with a feature that's not done. Feature branches would just create a mess for us as there's necessarily many communicating parts between teams, and the number of feature branches required to keep them all in sync would be exponential.