Scott Cariss

Automatic upgrades on live sites are, we think most people would agree, a Bad Idea. You can’t test them before they go live; they’ll play havoc with your version control system, if you’re using one; and if they fail or screw up, your live site is broken. Bad. Idea.
Enter Staunch. Staunch makes you stick to best practice for upgrades, by preventing even admins and superadmins from running WordPress’s automatic upgrade processes on your live site.
When you want to upgrade WordPress, you can do so on a local or development install of your site; after you’ve tested it and made sure everything’s okay, you can then deploy the site as you usually would — through version control, FTP, or something else.

Staunch

A WordPress plugin to prevent automatic updates on your live sites.

dajulia3

Adds revisions (version control) for WordPress theme files. Adds a version viewer to the theme editor. 
You can write your own adapter plugin to use the VCS of your choice, or just use the default 
database-backed VCS that comes with the plugin.
For instructions and help for both users and developers, see <a href="http://dajulia3.github.com/WordPress-Theme-Versioning/" title="WordPress Theme Versioning Documentation" rel="nofollow ugc">The Official Documentation</a>

Theme Versioning

Adds revisions (version control) for WordPress theme files. Adds a version viewer to the theme editor.

Staunch vs Theme Versioning