Feature Branches

Isolated development, safe merging, and working as a team

The Problem with Sharing

So far, everyone works in one Dev workspace and commits straight to main

Dev Workspace
Alice editing notebook
Bob editing report
Carol fixing model
Commit
→
main branch
Half-finished features
Overwritten changes
Broken deployments

In traditional dev, everyone has their own machine. In Fabric, workspaces are shared — so we need another way to isolate work.

Inner Loop vs Outer Loop

Two development cycles that shape how you work:

🔁 Inner Loop

Code → Test → Fix → Repeat
Your personal dev workspace
Fast — seconds to minutes
Private — just you

🚀 Outer Loop

Commit → Review → Deploy
Git repo + deployment pipeline
Slower — minutes to hours
Shared — team and users

The challenge: In Fabric, workspaces are shared — so each developer needs their own workspace and own branch to get a private inner loop.

Feature Branches + Workspaces

Each developer gets their own branch and their own workspace

Alice-Dev
feature-sales-report
Bob-Dev
feature-fix-model
Pull Request
→
🔒 CI Workspace
main (merged code)
Read only — no direct commits
Deploy
→
Prod
main (via pipeline)
  • Branch policies block direct commits to main
  • Pull requests are the only way in — with review and approval
  • Branch out in Fabric creates the branch + workspace in one step
  • Done? Delete the branch in GitHub — or keep your workspace and switch it to the next feature branch

What You'll Do in Section 4

1
Learn about inner loop (your dev cycle) vs outer loop (team deployment)
2
Configure branch policies to protect main
3
Create a feature branch and workspace with Branch out
4
Merge your work with a pull request and clean up

Let's get started!