below86 (2/10/2016)
Please feel free to enlightened me.:-) But from what I've seen so far, only a couple weeks now, you can check in code in VCS but it isn't in production. So there is a set day each week that changes are deployed to production, I think Tuesday at 5 PM. So if my code has went through all of the steps and it is ready for prod I can check it in today, Wednesday, knowing it won't go into prod until the next Tuesday. Maybe the code should not get checked into prod until the day it will be deployed, but I'm sure there are situations that are going to call for checking it in sooner:-DIf code is checked in early like I mention above your 'true' version 'gold' code is not what is in VCS, it is what is in prod. Now if you are called at 3 AM for the failure you would grab the wrong version of the code. Now most times maybe that wouldn't hurt, but it could if it has time sensitive changes, new rates or whatever, or you may have missing columns or tables.
And maybe we are just too early into using this that these things will work themselves out.
I've already seen that there are about 4 branches of the code and some developers have placed there code in the wrong branches. It caused issue, but they were able to fix quickly because of VCS, which is a good thing.
My main point is if code can be checked in and not automatically updated to prod, then what's in prod has to be your 'true' version of the code.
Your comcerns are common for folka new to managing the gold copy of code in a VCS but you are missing some key elements important to the big picture. No matter whether you use one line of code and a labeling strategy as TFS calls it or you use merging and branching to create isolation of different veraions of the code, your SCM model will define where you can go to get the gold copy in your VCS, even in those times after code is checked in and is fully tested and accepted but not yet deployed.
There are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue is taught by the whole community.
--Plato