Hi, I got a question from a student I am mentoring, about using many feature branches in his tree. Here is the answer that apply (at least) to the two students I mentor.
Because the sub-projects on the schedule are linear, my opinion is that it will be simpler to just use the master branch, completing one feature before starting the next one.
Of course, the student has to frequently merge origin/master (origin being [0]) to his master branch or to all of his feature branches, to keep up with what happens in the "common" tree.
Moreover, if the student has many branches and modifies the same file in more than one branch, cross-merging between his branches has to be done and this require more planning.
There won't be a "final" merging at the end of GSoC. From the student guide [1], "Push every change you've done so that we can track your progress. GSoC has few deadlines, but we want to see and merge your code continuously! "
[0] git@github.com:phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin.git [1] http://wiki.phpmyadmin.net/pma/GSoC_2012_Student_Guide