I am kind of new to SVN, I haven't used it in detail basically just checking out trunk and committing then exporting and deploying.

I am working on a big project now with several developers and we are looking for the best deployment process. The one thing we are hung up on is the best way to tag, branch and so on. We are used to CVS where all you have to do is commit a file and tag it as production ready and if not that code will not get deployed.

I see that SVN handles tagging differently then CVS. I figure I am looking at this and making it overly complex. It seems the only way to work on a project and commit files without it being in the production code is to do it in a branch and then merge those changes when you are ready for it to be deployed. I am assuming you could also be working on other code that should be deployed so you would have to be switching between working copies, because otherwise you are working on a branch that isn't getting mixed in with the trunk or production branch?

This process seems overly complex and I was wondering if anyone could give me what you think is the best process for managing this.