On 17/10/2007, Matt Doran <matt.doran@papercut.com> wrote:
> Stefan Küng wrote:
> > Matt Doran wrote:
> >> Hi there,
> >>
> >> For me the killer feature with merge tracking is automate the
> >> repeated merging of trunk to a feature branch. If I understand
> >> things correctly, with the 1.5 command line client you can merge any
> >> pending changes simply by doing something like this:
> >>
> >> > cd feature-branch-wc
> >> > svn merge -g url-to-trunk
> >>
> >> You don't need to specify revision ranges, etc ... it just figures
> >> out which revision ranges need to be merged. It believe will even
> >> merge non-contiguous revision ranges.
> >
> > That's ok if you're working on a branch which you sometime later want
> > to merge back to the trunk.
> > But if you have a branch you use as a release branch, then that
> > wouldn't be a good idea because there you only want to merge very
> > specific revisions.
> If you look at the merge-tracking examples at colabnet
> (http://merge-tracking.open.collab.net/servlets/ProjectProcess?documentContainer=c2__Sample%20repository
> .... and the steps to reproduce it here:
> http://merge-tracking.open.collab.net/servlets/ProjectProcess?documentContainer=c2__Sample%20repository__Explanation%20of%20Repository%20Contents)
> ... you can see that they support bi-directional merging and a number of
> complex scenarios. It'll be interesting to see how well it all works
> in practise. The subversion guys are pretty switched on, so I have high
> hopes! :)
>
> Subversion has some stiff competition from mercurial/bzr these days.
> And their auto-merging very good. However I can't that I'll ever move
> without having a GUI as great as TSVN! :)
> >
> >> I've downloaded and installed a recent TSVN nightly build to play
> >> with the merge tracking features. The new "merge-tracking" features
> >> in the log dialog and blame are good, but it doesn't seem like merge
> >> has changed much in this area. You still need to specify the from/to
> >> URL and revision ranges, etc. Will TSVN support this new style of
> >> automated merging in some form? (I'm sorry if this is still under
> >> development .... or if this has been asked before but I couldn't find
> >> it in the archives or the nightly documentation).
> >>
> >> I understand that you will still need to have the ability to do the
> >> manual merge with all the options ... but I think providing this
> >> new-style merge is important to get the most of merge tracking.
> >
> > Do you have an idea on how we should implement this (UI wise)?
> That is a tricky question! I don't know if I'm a merge expert, but I
> use the existing dialog regularly and it is complex enough :)
>
> > I thought of an extra context menu entry "Auto merge", but then: what
> > happens if the user accidentally clicks on it? Or think of most users
> > who are not familiar with merging - they will always choose "Auto
> > merge" instead of "Manual merge", which means they would always get
> > wrong results for e.g. a release branch.
> >
> > The merge tracking is in use even with the merge dialog we have now:
> > you can specify the revision range HEAD-WorkingCopy - that's exactly
> > what 'svn merge -g' does.
> OK, I didn't realise that. I'll have an experiment with this tonight
> when I get home. I see if it gives me any ideas. Maybe we can think
> of a nice way to indicate that that this is what's going to happen.
Maybe we could have a merge wizard (I can feel the hatred rising
already ;-) to guide you through the common use cases, and a 'classic'
merge which is the dialog we have now.
One thing to remember is that unless the server and all clients are
1.5, merge tracking will not work reliably, so we should not default
to that mode.
Simon
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Received on Wed Oct 17 10:32:00 2007