In standard php or source code based projects we easily keep all of the code in SVN and each developer can checkout their own copy and collaborate on the same code.

When developing a Drupal site however, much of the work is in "setup". Besides the theme and modules you don't really have any "source code". How do you run multiple instances of the same site so developers can all work at the same time yet share their work?

Example Scenario:

We launch an initial version of a Drupal site with content type "X" created. We also initially launch a view on the site that lists all the nodes of type "X" in chronological order. The client starts using the site, add content, menu items etc.

The next release is planned to add user search ability to that view. The setup for that is contained in the database though. We can copy down the production database to our development version to get the latest data while we work on changing the view. During that time however the client can still be updating the site, making our dev database out of sync. When we are ready to push the new view to production, is there an easier way to do it other than manually repeat the steps to set it up on the production install?