The originating branch is sometimes called the parent branch, the upstream branch (or simply upstream, especially if the branches are maintained by different organisations or individuals), or the backing stream. Child branches are branches that have a parent; a branch without a parent is referred to as the trunk or the mainline.[1]
In some distributed revision control systems, such as Darcs, there is no distinction made between repositories and branches; in these systems, fetching a copy of a repository is equivalent to branching.
Branching also generally implies the ability to later merge or integrate changes back onto the parent branch. Often the changes are merged back to the trunk, even if this is not the parent branch. A branch not intended to be merged (e.g. because it has been relicensed under an incompatible license by a third party, or it attempts to serve a different purpose) is usually called a fork.”
