Back in the day with tools like CVS the branching facilities were awful and the pattern we usually had was do almost all the development in the trunk and then split off branches for releases. You really need those because once you are working on 2.0 you may still need to drop 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.1.1.1, etc!
I think small tight-knit teams could still work in that style today. Practically that's what I do for projects I do solo.