svn merging – additional comments

This is a small expansion on an earlier post about svn merging.

The svn Red Book gives the typical scenarios for merging including supporting work in development branches.

Create the branch:

svn cp https://svnserver.com/app/trunk https://svnserver.com/app/development

Check it out

svn co https://svnserver.com/app/development

Do work and keep the local copy updated based on updates to branch, trunk

blah
svn up
svn merge [--dry-run] ^/trunk

Commit changes (including those merged from trunk

svn ci

When done, merge back to trunk, delete branch, remake branch

svn merge [--dry-run] --reintegrate ^/branches/development
svn ci
svn delete ^/branches/development
svn cp https://svnserver.com/app/trunk https://svnserver.com/app/branches/new-development

In chapter 4 of the RedBook is a section called “Reintegrating” where the authors discuss why one should delete the development branch (and if necessary recreate it).