RE: Dev & Production repositories?

[Zieg, Mark]

> However, while merging, you need to be cautious against conflicts, since
they still can bring the 
> service down for a short while. So far, none of the conflicts took me more
than 60 seconds to resolve.
>
> I wonder what else could I do to prevent those unwanted conflicts?

You get conflicts?  That implies, if I understand this scenario correctly,
that you have actually made changes on the production box.  If you ONLY make
changes on the dev box, then there should be no "merge" process at all, only
an "update", without the possibility of conflicts.