Repository layout question

I'm working on a migration to Subversion and I could use some input as far as a repository layout strategy. To give you a little background, we are a team of several web developers primarily working on a single web application. It is hosted by us so we only have one production version to contend with. The site is written in Java/JSP so most of it is compiled binaries. Each developer has his own workspace and instance on the application server in our development environment. Currently, we have a single QA environment.

It is not uncommon for multiple developers to be working independently of each other on the same portion of the site. It's also not uncommon for one developer to be making an enhancement to a component and another might have to make an emergency hotfix to the same component. We may even have something in QA when an emergency fix needs to go into production. It's just the nature of the business we are in.

We would like to be able to reflect our development, QA and production environments in Subversion, or at least be able to tell what is in each environment at any given time. Is there an alternative to having separate development, QA and production branches? I just worry that we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot with all the merging that will need to happen with that setup. How have you dealt with keeping track of what's in your development, QA and production environments? I'm open to any suggestions.

Thanks,
Jeff
Received on Wed Aug 16 19:28:45 2006