Hi Matthew,
I believe you can use OACS 4 for production site if you know what you are doing. I have built a couple of production site with it and so has my officemates. OACS 4 comes from ACS 4.2 Tcl which has seen some production already.
Currently from what know the CVS copy is broken because Don B is doing a major revamp regarding sort trees. I have used OACS 4 by synch with the CVS for several months. Basically I do a cvs update on my local copy of openacs once in a while. I look for what files are updated and if the files are core files I check out the cvs history or status of the file. Do a cvs import to my development tree, manually merge the conflicts if needed.
Alot also does heavily the way you code. To keep my code away from OACS code, I use as much as the public procs. I never change any proc or datamodel. I just write wrapper procs and do the modification I need after the real proc has been called. Rather the altering any table or trigger, just add a table and relate it or just add another trigger.
As long as you are aware that the code that your are working on as code as others are working on you will be ok.Keep up to date by following the bboards, you may want to know if there are major changes that will affect your code.
