What is a good, non-distributed, alternative to subversion that has excellent branching and merging support?

Question

I'm sick and tired of manually tracking my branches and merges across my repository! It's too error prone. In a world where everyone seems to get the idea of reducing duplication and automating everything, subversion branching/merging feels like it's left over from the 80's. What is a good alternative to subversion that has excellent branching and merging support without adding the complexity of a distributed SCM paradigm? Ideally it would be free, but if I have to shell out some cash I might be inclined if it's good enough.

Answer 1

Did you ever ask yourself why you have so many branch/merge operations? Is there a way to simplify your development process?

Subversion, IMHO, is a good application of the KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) principle. Translation: In my experience you will get a far greater productivity boost from streamlining your development process than from getting a more complex tool.

Answer 2

Have you upgraded to Subversion 1.5? It includes automated merge tracking. This may address your issue. It sounds like you're already familiar with the tool itself and it's free. So, if you upgrade your current solution to 1.5 you'll have almost no learning curve and zero cost - plus you won't have to go through the pain of porting your existing code to a new source code control system.