Trunk-based development aims to solve issues that arise from feature branching such as merge conflicts and integration problems. It advocates keeping the main codebase in a releasable state at all times through practices such as continuous integration, componentization, and making changes in small, incremental steps. Branching is discouraged except for short-lived spikes or major new releases, as large changes tend to cause more problems. The approach enables easy flow of work across teams and helps avoid integration issues that come from separate branches diverging too much.