About your Subversion repository (explaining 'branches', 'tags', 'trunk')

A standard source control repository contains three top level folders:

1. trunk
2. tags
3. branches

This page will attempt to explain what each of these is for, and what you should do with them.

trunk

This is where your main (current) development takes place. The 'trunk' directory is the root directory for your code. You will (usually) be copying your 'trunk' directory to create tags and branches.

tags

When you do a release, or when you want to create a snapshot of your code at a given time, you do so by creating a tag. You can read more about ​creating a tag.

branches

For plugins, we'll most likely have a branch of the plugin that corresponds to each WordPress release. If a problem is found with an older version of a plugin (say one for WordPress 1.2), it can be fixed on the appropriate branch for the plugin, then a 'tag' and a patch release can be created. Meanwhile, the new development for the plugin for the current version of WordPress continues in 'trunk'. You can read more about ​branches here.