I never thought it (one-off fixes and branching) was a good idea. It happened because one customer constitutes a large percentage of our revenue, and the busine

I never thought it (one-off fixes and branching) was a good idea. It happened because one customer constitutes a large percentage of our revenue, and the business guys made the decision with little care about the effects it would have on the software. Yes, this is all a complicated edge case, but in certain contexts (corporate software, where you aren't calling the shots, or, you are calling the shots but aren't willing to tell a customer constituting 40% of your revenue to fuck off), you need a better solution. Additionally, at the start of the project you don't always know whether you'll need to support branching. Often, once you figure out you need branching it's too late to fix. Fixing requires changing the build process, testing time, educating QA and Support about the new process, etc. I'd rather have a well-understood, general purpose solution ahead of time. IMO, "git versioning" accomplishes this, and it's just as simple.