>+1 for only having one infinite-lifetime branch.
Do we all have the same understanding that branches and tags (and SHA-1 hashes) are essentially the same thing in git? Is the Accumulo community saying that a release gets a git tag but development is done inside a branch? Each developer creates a personal branch, does stuff and then merges that branch (details TBD) into master. The development branch is always local and not pushed to the official git repository? I'll note that this description does not preclude developers from sharing each other's branches in a point-to-point network.
