We covered a lot of ground in this chapter. We discussed the concepts of tags and branches and demonstrated how Subversion implements these concepts by copying directories with the svn copy command. We showed how to use svn merge to copy changes from one branch to another or roll back bad changes. We went over the use of svn switch to create mixed-location working copies. And we talked about how one might manage the organization and lifetimes of branches in a repository.

Remember the Subversion mantra: branches and tags are cheap. So don't be afraid to use them when needed!

As a helpful reminder of all the operations we discussed, here is handy reference table you can consult as you begin to make use of branches.