I develop some scripts for data analysis in a small team. For the moment we use SVN, but not in a very structured way. We haven't even looked how to use branches even though we need this functionality.

What do you suggest as the best practice to setup the following system:

• two code bases (core and plugins)
• versions can be incompatible to previous scripts
• sometimes individual features are being developed and not yet finished, while other fixes have to be done urgently to the code

In the end we don't deliver the code as a package, but rather place the Python scripts in some directory (with version names?). Some other python script which serves as a configuration choses the desired version, sets the path to these libraries and then starts to import the modules.

I saw stable releases to be named "trunk" so I did the same. However, no version numbers yet. Core and plugins are different repositories, however we have to match versions for compatibility. Can you suggest some best practices or reference to ease development and reduce chaos? :) Some suggested GIT. I haven't heard about it, but I'm free to change.