What are the best practices with source code control? [closed]

Question

After a recent "accident" at work, whereby some bugs that previously had been fixed were reintroduced, I was asked to document a set of guidelines for the use of source code control (CVS in this case).

What do you consider to be best practices for using source code control? In particular, how do you manage branching and labelling and how do you ensure that the current production release can be patched while continuing to develop new features? For context, the team size is up to 10 developers in two locations.

Answer 1

8 Commandments of Source Control pretty much sums it up.

On the topic of branching and labeling what we do at work is:

Labeling

When ever an environmental release is done it is labeled with at the very least the date of the release. All (related) bugs are then set so that the "resolved in release" is this label.

Branching

Only created on an as-needed basis. A branch is done off a label so that a change can be done against a previously released version (ie, fixing a bug on production without including all other bug fixes)