I am using DNN 7 for a company website with a SQL Server back-end.  I have a few workarounds in place in terms of Feature Branching.  This a common practice of separating code changes (features) off of the main branch so the team of developers can also access our dev branch and publish/execute other changes.  However with each feature branch we take we have to or are going through an entire setup of DNN for each feature.  Is there a way to cut a feature branch and run it on the same instance of the initial install?  Also is there a way to share this branch?  Each developer has a local install, so the database currently is relevant only to the machine it's on. We use separate environments for production, dev, and testing.  I have workarounds in place just curious as to what everyone else is doing..

Well we have a couple workarounds really nothing to efficient hence asking the question to see what others in the community are doing.  The main issue is sharing the database, as this is the main feature to running DNN.  Everything lives in the database, creating a feature branch is just code.  So pointing the code to a shareable database is target.

1. We are using a DNN server installation and having all developers use this database as their development database.  So we share common DNN features.  Then create feature branches, so the code is featured specific while using a shared resource.  Not a bad thing, but if something in DNN changes (not frequently) we just need to communicate it.  
2. We tried using several installations of DNN Databases, one for each developer, one for each branch, and it was a pain because we had to do installation and replenish licenses for each.  And again not quite as dynamic as we liked.
3. Originally we were trying shelve sets (TFS)/stashes (GIT) of code.  With local DNN Database installs, merging the stashes on top of local environment.  Worked but highly inefficient.

The shared DNN database seems to be working just curious as to what others do.  We, also tried using Evotiva for database backups to share.  This helped as well as sharing the resource but again everything requires reinstalling/licensing.  The challenge is surrounds itself around the database.