It's too bad, the development branch was looking VERY nice. It solved some of the biggest gripes of the new format.
Anyway, after staring in agape horror at the three jungle islands I carved, I decided to aggressively pursue a development environment that would not let me wander (or wonder) so far off course without sufficient bread crumbs to find my way back. My wonder bread I discovered was CVS, which I had never considered in the past because I'm just a one-man development team (CVS -- concurrent versioning system, used in multi-manned projects, almost a necessity, if not for the project, then for the project manager's sanity.)