Merging across branches in Subversion isn’t adding all the new files. Why not

branchmergesvn

I've got a source code tree in subversion with several branches. I've just finished a fairly intense debugging session in an otherwise active branch and now need to merge the changes across to the new branch. The new branch was taken off trunk (which represents released code) recently, after all the development in the old branch (obviously) but before I committed all my debugging. Attempting to svn merge, however, doesn't merge across all the files that were added. It adds some, but not all.

Here's the time line:

Branch off trunk to create branch dev1.
Code in dev1, modifying files and adding files.
Branch off trunk to create branch dev2.
Bug fix in dev1, modifying files but not adding files.
Merge all changes in dev1 over to dev2.

As expected, there are many changes, including new files, but not all of them. Is it because the range of versions I'm merging from includes the version that made the dev2 branch? Or should I be merging to trunk and then down to dev2?

Edit: All code is fully committed into Subversion. But I think what might be happening is that file additions do not propagate through merges. That is, a prior merge to dev1 added a few files, but a merge from dev1 that encompasses the commit from the prior merge does not include the added files.

But I'm still checking.

Best Answer

The following statement is not true:

Files that were added to a branch and then changed on the branch don't get added when doing a merge across number of revisions

That would imply merging is totally broken.

When you do the merge, you need to make sure that you do merge the revision that created the file, otherwise you'll get those warnings about no target.

The other thing to watch out for is if you do a merge into a working copy, then decide you're not happy with it and revert everything, the newly added files will still be in the working copy, so if you merge again, the unversioned files will prevent the merge of new files there, so you will miss them. So running "svn status" and removing unversioned files will ensure the merge works properly.

The comment about adding an empty file should not be done, because then the new file has no history of where it came from. In other words, it's not a copy, so "svn log" will not show its history. And finally, if the file were a gigabyte photo, you wouldn't want to merge it into a new file, because then the repository would have two copies of the exact same context. Merging and copying with history saves repository storage (at least until rep-sharing is put in).

Now you want to commit onto the SVN server

[Eventually] stash the modifications you don't want to see committed on the SVN server (often you commented some code in the main file just because you want to accelerate the compilation and focus on a given feature)
```
(work)$> git stash
```
rebase the master branch with the SVN repository (to update from the SVN server)
```
(work)$> git checkout master
(master)$> git svn rebase
```

go back to the work branch and rebase with master

(master)$> git checkout work
(work)$> git rebase master

Ensure everything is fine using, for instance:

(work)$> git log --graph --oneline --decorate

Now it's time to merge all three commits from the "work" branch into "master" using this wonderful --no-ff option
```
(work)$> git checkout master
(master)$> git merge --no-ff work
```

You can notice the status of the logs:

(master)$> git log --graph --oneline --decorate
* 56a779b (work, master) Merge branch 'work'
|\  
| * af6f7ae msg 3
| * 8750643 msg 2
| * 08464ae msg 1
|/  
* 21e20fa (git-svn) last svn commit

Now you probably want to edit (amend) the last commit for your SVN dudes (otherwise they will only see a single commit with the message "Merge branch 'work'"
```
(master)$> git commit --amend
```
Finally commit on the SVN server
```
(master)$> git svn dcommit
```
Go back to work and eventually recover your stashed files:
```
(master)$> git checkout work
(work)$> git stash pop
```

Using TortoiseSVN how to merge changes from the trunk to a branch and vice versa

I couldn't properly follow the other answers, here's more of a dummies guide...

You can do this either way round to go trunk -> branch or branch -> trunk. I always first do trunk -> branch fix any conflicts there and then merge branch -> trunk.

Merge trunk into a branch / tag

Checkout the branch / tag
Right-click on the root of the branch | Tortoise SVN | Merge ...
Merge Type: Merge a range of revisions | Click 'Next'
Merge revision range: Select the URL of the trunk directory that you copied to the branch / tag. Enter the revisions to merge or leave the field empty to merge all revisions | click 'Next'
Merge options: I just left these as default | click 'Merge'
This will merge the revisions into the checked out branch / tag
Then commit the merged changes to the branch / tag

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Git – Is git-svn dcommit after merging in git dangerous

Now you want to commit onto the SVN server

Using TortoiseSVN how to merge changes from the trunk to a branch and vice versa

Merge trunk into a branch / tag

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