I’ve been using git pretty heavily lately. The commands are a little wonky to learn, but once you’ve mastered a core set, distributed software revision control becomes a snap. I’m particularly impressed with how smoothly git manages branches and synchronization. I remember how painful that was in Subversion (and CVS).
Subversion Branching and Merging
This blog entry by Ned Batchelder is basically the best article I’ve seen on branching and merging using Subversion.
Note: (2018/01/13) Er, it’s a good article. But I’ve since moved on to git, a technology that makes branching and merging much, much easier. Friends don’t let friends do Subversion anymore.