I'd like to stay close to monodevelop since many wonderful things are happening there and I'd like to be a part of that effort:)

I moved from Fedora to SUSE because I was having problems installing monodevelop from SVN; and, found that the release was fresher than Fedora. I have been using whatever monodevelop updates came to me automatically in SUSE. When I tried to use GUI menus I found it broken; and am back considering getting closer to development because I hear the SVN is fixed. I checked-out monodevelop from SVN and find dependency problems with mono and other necessary packages. I hear that a release is imminent but can't find any information about when it's expected. So I'm back wondering about checking-out monodevelop and needed packages from SVN.

I know of no simple way to checkout all the packages I need from SVN and install them. And to complicate things further I know the SVN can be frail so I would really like to keep several of these acquisitions functional. I would like to go back to a previous one easily.

How do others deal with these issues?

Is there some news feed I can go to to figure out when and what is expected into the release channels?

Many thanks for any help you can provide,
Dale E. Moore